Coming War With Iran - All Iran News Here

[Xtorted]

Hi guys, I was wondering if I could get some help?  I was listening to Alex's show last Sunday and I heard him talking about the US leading covert ops to blow up mosques and schools in Iran.  Usually when Alex says something like that I can find info on it fairly easily but I can't find anything on this.

A friend of mine is visiting and he's from Iran, and I wanted to show him this.  Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[sweet*sugar]

Hi guys, I was wondering if I could get some help?  I was listening to Alex's show last Sunday and I heard him talking about the US leading covert ops to blow up mosques and schools in Iran.  Usually when Alex says something like that I can find info on it fairly easily but I can't find anything on this.

A friend of mine is visiting and he's from Iran, and I wanted to show him this.  Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/

[Xtorted]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/

Thanks a bunch.  He mentioned us admitting to this in court, has there been any coverage of that?

[bigron]

Ron Paul: I hear members of Congress saying "if we could only nuke Iran"

Congressman warns of imminent confrontation


Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, July 4, 2008

http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/040708RonPaul2.htm
 

Congressman Ron Paul has warned millions of radio listeners that the US is heading into a deadly confrontation with Iran, revealing his disbelief at members of Congress who have openly voiced support for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the country.
"If we do (attack) it is going to be a disaster," the Congressman told the Alex Jones show this Thursday.

"I was astounded to see on one of the networks the other day that the debate was not are we going to attack? but are we going to attack before or after the election?" Paul continued.

The Congressman recently voiced his concern over House Congressional Resolution 362 which he has dubbed a 'Virtual Iran War Resolution'.

"If that comes up it is demanding that the President put on an absolute blockade of the entire country of Iran, and punish any country or any business group around the world if they trade with Iran." Paul told listeners.


Experts have predicted gas will rise to $6 per gallon if the resolution passes, Paul believes that may happen anyway just by anticipation.

"The frightening thing is they say they are taking no options off the table, even nuclear first strike." The Congressman stated.

Paul believes from talking with his contacts in and around Congress that a strike on Iran has already been green lighted.

"That is my sense because the Democratic leadership in the House are proposing no resistance whatsoever, we saw this when a supplemental bill came up and the President asked for $107 billion for the war, the Democrat leadership gave them $162 billion.

It is still totally bewildering to me when I see men and women in the Congress that I know and like doing this just to get along. Most of them will say "I agree with you on all you say but the Iranians are bad people and they might attack us some day... I hear members of Congress saying 'if we could only nuke them'."

Ron Paul also spoke in detail about his new Campaign For Liberty Group and his views on the upcoming election.

Listen to the full interview below.



Ron Paul on the Alex Jones Show:"We Must Press on" pt1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLzupHe_HTk&eurl=http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/040708RonPaul2.htm


Ron Paul on the Alex Jones Show:"We Must Press on" pt2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmtcjPXerJo&eurl=http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/040708RonPaul2.htm


Ron Paul on the Alex Jones Show:"We Must Press on" pt3


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei3TF3GEyJk&eurl=http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/040708RonPaul2.htm

[bigron]

July 7, 2008

Will the US Attack Iran?
 
by Alan Bock


Of course, if Seymour Hersh is right, in a pretty real sense the Bush administration has already attacked Iran. Under the auspices of a presidential finding promulgated last fall or winter, special operations forces and other operatives are inside Iran trying to stir up and capitalize on the kind of discontent that just might lead to regime change. It would be funny if it weren't more tragic to consider that the United States, based on its actions, has evolved into some kind of bizarre caricature of the dying Soviet empire, blundering about, spreading money and weapons and operatives around to try to subvert (the acolytes would say "liberate," just as the Soviet ideologists and propagandists did) various regimes that we consider dangerous or vulnerable or both.

Because advocates of the policies the U.S. seems to be following would speak to him only of high degrees of classification or in generalities, Hersh ended up having his most fruitful conversations with critics of the apparently disjointed and ill-thought-out activities your tax dollars (or your grandchildrens') are paying for. His perspective may be a little one-sided; there just might be a plausible strategy behind the expenditure of some $400 million. But critics of throwing it around among Ahwazi Arab, Baloch, and other dissident groups and seeking better intelligence about Iran's nuclear programs make a pretty good case that, at best, it is most likely money wasted, and could have untoward consequences.

So the U.S. government is arguably, if covertly, already at war with the Iranian regime. It's the kind of war that the other side can choose to avert its eyes from if it deems the threat trivial or if it wants to buy time to assemble the means of crushing it. If the covert war starts to do actual damage, the risk of incidents that could lead to serious military action rises, even if neither side really wants escalation.

For years I have been more skeptical than many antiwar people about the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran, and the fundamental disincentives still apply. Adm. Mike Mullen has let it be known that he would like more troops in Afghanistan, but for the time being he will have to extend tours of duty instead because so many troops are tied down in Iraq. Where is he going to get troops for action In Iran, unless the calculation is that some of the troops now in Iraq can be sent over to Iran without seriously destabilizing Iraq? (If so, it's an argument that the Iraqis, who are starting at least to talk like an independent entity, have things well in hand enough that U.S. troop withdrawals could begin quickly without leaving behind too much of a mess or triggering a bloodbath – though, of course, U.S. strategists don't have an especially impressive record of predicting unintended consequences in Iraq.)

Iran would be a much more difficult military target than Iraq was. The argument could be made that we could do enough just with bombing – not eliminate the threat forever of Iran getting a nuclear weapon but delay the likelihood by a decade or so – to make it a tolerable risk. But such an attack would not eliminate and might even increase the ability of Iran to respond in damaging ways – blocking the Strait of Hormuz, getting Hamas, Hezbollah, and maybe Syria to do damage to U.S. and Israeli interests and probably Israeli territory, not to mention mucking about much more extensively in Iraq. Killing civilians, especially scientists and technicians working on nuclear projects, would create an unpleasant backlash, but failing to do so would make it likelier that Iran could recover quickly and really get cracking on a nuke. Equipment can be replaced, but recovering specialized knowledge and experience might take a generation

All these fundamentals militate against starting a war, and it seems to be the case that a goodly number of military leaders are pushing back against the kind of rush to war most observers think Cheney would like to initiate. Still, in recent weeks we have seen a number of incidents that suggest the possibility of serious military action, whether we get there by design or by stumbling into it. For instance, there was the highly publicized Israeli exercise in which fighters and bombers flew toward the Mediterranean near Greece, the same number of miles in that direction as Iran is in another, as many pointed out.

Does that indicate that the Israelis are getting ready to strike, with or without U.S. cooperation? As Stratfor.com's George Friedman has pointed out, it seems unlikely. For starters, an aerial foray to Iran would have to pass over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace; indeed, refueling would have to take place in Iraqi airspace, which the U.S. controls. In addition, rescue helicopters would almost certainly have to be based in Iraq to be useful, which would mean the U.S. would at least have to facilitate and provide ground services.

The most fundamental factor arguing against a unilateral Israeli strike, however, is that by publicizing the war games over Greece, Israel utterly eliminated the element of surprise. When Israel took out the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981, it took everybody, including the U.S. and other allies, completely by surprise. Giving the Iranians a warning makes it likely the Iranians could do more to move activities to places that would not be seriously affected by conventional bombing and missile strikes, or at least only marginally damaged. Moving people out of harm's way would be easier and could be done more quickly than moving heavy equipment. Under most circumstances, you would think that if Israel were going to strike it would do everything possible to avoid signaling its intentions, and it has done the opposite.

Unfortunately, that might suggest that if the geniuses running the administration really think it would be useful to strike Iran before leaving office (and let the successor deal with the consequences), they might conclude that a unilateral U.S. strike is the least dangerous way to go. Sunni regimes in the region would be seriously upset if the Israelis struck, but they might be privately relieved and content with only token protests if the U.S. did it. At least one could make that calculation.

Consequently, while I still think the fundamentals, considered strictly in a coldly calculated realpolitik fashion, argue strongly against an overt U.S. military attack on Iran, it's possible to imagine people on the other side of the argument making a case that the Bushlet just might buy. And he might even be more likely to buy into it (or even be signaling that he wants the case to be made more aggressively), fancying it will enhance his precious legacy as a visionary leader not afraid to take decisive action, even – especially? – if it's not popular.

So here's one observer who's uncertain but a little fearful that what the late Gen. William Odom (and may his shade forgive me for not more publicly celebrating what he achieved in a life devoted to his country's best long-term interests when he died recently) called "America's Inadvertent Empire," might just blunder inadvertently into a conflict that could make the Iraqi debacle seem like a walk in the garden with plenty of time to smell the flowers.
 

 

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=13099 
 

[bigron]

From the Los Angeles Times

No proxy war with Iran

The United States must not signal that it would be acceptable for Israel to bomb Iranian targets.

July 3, 2008
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/itsonlyfair/latimes0370.html


Israel and the United States are starting to look like two anxious children trying to decide how to deal with a schoolyard bully, Iran. Each appears to be whispering encouragement to the other to go kick the bully in the shins, but each is so terrified of the consequences that neither wants to go first.

President Bush telegraphed this dangerous diplomatic gambit to the media Wednesday when he was asked about the recent spate of reports that military action against Iran, by either Israel or the U.S. and before the end of Bush's term, is under discussion. First he repeated his long-standing position that while “all options” are on the table, his "first option" to solve the problem of Iran's nuclear programs would be through diplomacy. But Bush then dodged the question "Would you strongly discourage Israel from going after Iran militarily?" The unmistakable signal is that Bush not only won't discourage Israel from striking at Iranian nuclear targets but would support Israel should Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decide to bomb.

The military reality is that Israel cannot effectively attack Iran without Bush's acquiescence because Israeli jets would need to cross Iraqi airspace that is currently controlled by the U.S. And multiple bombing runs would be required (though even strikes by the far superior U.S. Air Force would probably do no more than delay Iran's development of a nuclear weapon by a few months or years). That means Israel would not be able to protect the United States with the political fiction that it had conducted a surprise attack without informing the U.S. beforehand. In any case, Tehran has already announced that it would make no distinction between a U.S. or an Israeli attack. Nor would many other nations.

There are a dozen reasons why "If you want to whack them, we've got your back" is the wrong message for the U.S. to send Israel, publicly or privately.

One is the increase in oil prices as a result of the war talk, which only enriches Iran. But here are two better ones: The consequences of an Israeli war with Iran are unpredictable, and it is nearly impossible to assess Iran's ability to make good on its threats to retaliate against the United States, presumably through its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. The last thing the U.S. needs now is more instability, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael G. Mullen said Wednesday. And while the odds may be low that diplomacy will solve the problem, we can't know for sure because we haven't tried it. Only the Europeans have. If bilateral talks with nuclear North Korea were acceptable to Bush, then why is it still anathema to talk with Iran?



Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

[bigron]

U.S. reported to fear Israeli strike won't take out Iran nukes 
 
By Haaertz Service 
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999334.html
 


Senior United States defense officials fear that a much-anticipated Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would fail to destroy them due to lack of intelligence about their location, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The British newspaper stated that evidence of the CIA and Mossad espionage agency's dearth of knowledge on the matter emerged during recent Israel-U.S. talks.

Citing an official familiar with the discussions who has briefed Iran experts in Washington and London, the Sunday Telegraph stated that the talks were between Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Israeli generals.
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Despite the gaps in intelligence, the Pentagon chiefs worry that Israel will feel compelled to act within the next 12 months, despite no guarantee that it can do more than slow Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

While Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, Israel, the U.S. and other allies fear that the Islamic Republic is covertly seeking to produce nuclear weapons.

The American commander's assessment emerged after an Iranian government spokesman on Saturday said his country's nuclear program remains unchanged, indicating that Tehran has no plans to meet the West's central demand that it stop enriching uranium.


 

[bigron]

'Iran leaks reflect internal US debate'

Jul. 7, 2008

THE JERUSALEM POST


The recent spate of leaks and reports from Washington about whether Israel will, or should, take military action against Iran, and what that would mean for the US, is a reflection of deep divisions on the matter inside the Bush administration, Israeli diplomatic and defense officials said Sunday.

The officials said that the two sides of the argument, the "hawkish camp," led by US Vice President Dick Cheney, and the "dovish camp," led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, are leaking assessments about Israeli intent to further their own agendas, and in this regard using Israel as a "pawn" in their own political battles.

For instance, one official said, the recent remarks made by US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen to the effect that an attack on Iran and a "third front" would be bad for US interests were aimed not merely at deterring Israel from action, but also at "handcuffing" those inside the administration who are supportive of military action.

One Israeli diplomatic official said that as the debate rages in Washington, it was clear that Israel would be unable to take military action without a green light from the US.

"Everyone understands that we could not take action without US approval," the official said, "both because we would need to fly through airspace controlled by the US, and we would need their help in dealing with repercussions from any attack." The most direct air route to Iran is through Iraqi airspace, which is controlled by the US.

"We would need their help in carrying out the attack, and also afterward," the official said.

"We would have to deal with possible military action from Hizbullah and Syria, and also diplomatic fallout. Don't expect the world to clap if we attack Iran, and as a result oil prices spiral from $140 a barrel to $300 a barrel."

The official said Israel would need US diplomatic cover to deal with the world's condemnation, and possibly even sanctions, in the aftermath of a raid.

Although Israeli officials said they were not surprised by the various different assessments coming out of Washington, because they have long been aware of the internal divisions on this matter, they said they were slightly surprised by remarks made by Mullen about the "third front" because he had not issued these warnings in his meetings with top Israeli military brass during his visit to Tel Aviv last week.

At a press conference in Washington last week, Mullen said that "Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us," adding that while he believed Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons the efforts needed to focus on diplomatic, financial and economic actions.

The Israeli officials said that the talks with Mullen had focused primarily on Iran but had also dealt with other regional issues such as Hamas's military buildup in Gaza and Hizbullah's in Lebanon. They added, however, that the concern voiced by Mullen was real and reflected fears in Washington that a strike against Iran would destabilize the region and undermine America's recent success in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Anthony H. Cordesman, an American national security analyst who served as a former national security assistant to presumptive Republic Party presidential nominee John McCain said Sunday that the US is trying to pursue the diplomatic option with Iran over its nuclear program since it does not view the nuclear threat by the Islamic Republic as an "urgent" crisis.

"I think we are contemplating to do exactly what we said we are doing - which is to try to pursue diplomatic options, and the reasons are very simple: We do not see this as an urgent crisis in terms of Iran rapidly acquiring weapons or effective delivery systems," said Cordesman in an address at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Cordesman, who also served as a former director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, conceded that the US assessment on Iran's nuclear program is at odds with Israeli intelligence estimates, and said that the whole issue is likely to be left to the next US President.

"If that assessment changes, it does differ from some Israeli experts, then our timing might change. But I suspect that is going to be an issue for President Obama or President McCain," he said.

"In terms of US strikes on Iran, we have a contingency plan for virtually anything. And in this case, are we going to constantly have the ability to execute some kind of strike plan against Iran's missiles and weapons of mass destruction, including its nuclear facilities? Yes. Are we about to execute it? No! The president of the United States has said that, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state [and] the chairman of Joint Chiefs."

A US intelligence report issued last year stated that Iran had frozen its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but continued to enrich uranium, which, nuclear experts say, is the hardest part of building a bomb.

Israeli intelligence believes that the American report is incorrect, and that the Islamic Republic has continued to work on its nuclear weapons program.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1215330878502&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[bigron]

New War Brewing: US, Israel Take Dangerous Steps

by Eric Margolis


GENEVA – The U.S., Israel and Iran are playing a very dangerous game of chicken that soon could result in a new Mideast war.

U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration and Israel, recently joined by France, are issuing increasingly loud threats of military action to frighten Iran into halting its nuclear enrichment program.

Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely for civilian use. Tehran is alternating between conciliatory statements and threats to retaliate against any attack by inflicting economic chaos on the global economy. Europe fears the economic damage a war against Iran would bring far more than Iran’s nuclear program.

Senior Israeli officials are openly threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear installations before President George W. Bush’s term expires. Early, this month Israel staged a large, U.S.-approved exercise using F-15s and F-16s to rehearse an attack over 900 miles – precisely the distance to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The highly regarded American journalist Seymour Hersh just confirmed that the U.S. Congress authorized a $400-million plan to overthrow Iran’s government and incite ethnic unrest. This column reported a year ago that U.S. and British special forces were operating in Iran, preparing for a massive air campaign. Israel’s destruction of an alleged Syrian reactor last fall was a warning to Iran.

This week a Pentagon official claimed an Israeli attack on Iran was coming before year end.

Other Pentagon and CIA sources say a U.S. attack on Iran is imminent, with or without Israel. The Bush administration is even considering using small tactical nuclear weapons against deeply buried Iranian targets.

Senior American officers Admiral William Fallon and Air Force Chief Michael Mosley recently were fired for opposing war against Iran. According to Israel’s media, President Bush even told Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that he could not trust America’s intelligence community and preferred to rely on Israeli intelligence.

AIR BLITZ

Intensifying activity is evident at U.S. bases in Europe and the Gulf, aimed at preparing a massive air blitz that may include repeated attacks on 3,100 targets in Iran. Other sources say Iranian Revolutionary Guard installations will be barraged by cruise missiles.

In Washington, Congress, under intense pressure from the Israel lobby, is about to adopt a resolution calling for a naval blockade of Iran, an overt act of war.

Pro-Israel groups have been airing TV commercials claiming Iran is attacking American troops in Iraq and threatens the U.S.

The Bush administration’s last desperate act, its Götterdämmerung, could be war with Iran. UN weapons inspectors concur with U.S. intelligence that there is no proof Iran is working on nuclear arms, but the neocon war party in Washington is determined to loosen a final Parthian shaft by striking Iran.

Israel asserts the right to maintain its Mideast nuclear monopoly by destroying all fissile-producing reactors in the region. Iran vows to retaliate against Israel with its inaccurate Shahab missiles, shut the Strait of Hormuz and mine the Gulf, producing worldwide financial panic, severe fuel shortages, and $400-$500 per barrel oil. Iran likely will attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, and strike Saudi and Kuwaiti oil facilities. Canadians in Afghanistan could also become targets.

GRAVE DAMAGE

The embattled Bush administration’s bunker mentality is leading to war that will gravely damage long-term U.S. Mideast interests. A single Iranian missile hit on Israel’s reactor would do more damage to the Jewish state than all its previous wars. Besides, Israel cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. A U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran will guarantee Tehran decides to build nuclear weapons. Israel and Iran have turned their regional rivalry into a confrontation that threatens all.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, not its bombastic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, controls that nation’s military and insists Iran will not produce nuclear weapons. Israel claims it faces a second holocaust. Iran says Israel’s nuclear forces threaten its existence.

The dogs of war are being unleashed.

July 7, 2008

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.

Copyright © 2008 Eric Margolis

 
 
Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis115.html 

[bigron]

Living forever by bombardment 
 
By Gideon Levy 
 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999126.html

So what is the "great plan"? As things look now, this is the way Israel is planning its future: Every time some Middle Eastern country tries to obtain nuclear weapons, Israel will bomb it. Bomb - and bombard. Beyond the problematic assumption that we are allowed to do what others are not allowed, and what is secure in our hands is dangerous in the hands of others, this kind of conduct will lead to disaster. We tried twice, in Iraq and in Syria, and it worked; it is doubtful it was essential.

Now it seems we are going to try a third time against Iran. It may even be successful, but nothing lasts forever. It will end in catastrophe. From bombardment to bombardment, that is not the way for Israel to establish itself in the Middle East in the long term. But no one discusses the long term beyond tomorrow.

We could and should now discuss the chances, and especially the risks, of an attack on Iran. We usually hold such a discussion, if at all, under impossible conditions: either retrospectively, when it is too late, lacking information or after receiving disinformation. Those in on the secrets are also the ones to make the decision. But those in on secrets always lean in a belligerent direction; war is the only doctrine and craft they know. So it is very dangerous to depend solely on them.
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We could and should now consider an attack on Iran, but not only by consulting our own security experts. We should, for example, also listen to the impressive and knowledgeable Hans Blix, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who had reasonable things to say in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth; things that are missing from our warped public discourse. Blix warned that if Israel acts against Iran the whole region will go up in flames, that Syria's nuclear capabilities are primitive, that the attack on the reactor in Iraq was unnecessary, and above all, that the government in Iran can be made to give up the bomb, but not by force.

The Swedish diplomat believes that if the international community offers guarantees of Iran's security and accepts it as a member in good standing as was done with North Korea, perhaps there will be no bomb. This has not been tried. The international community is making do with threats and sanctions that do not deter Iran, and the Israel Air Force is already conducting drills, it is believed, for the next dangerous adventure. The assumption that the window of opportunity is about to close because of the changing of the guard at the White House is distorted: Might not Barack Obama, if elected, talk to Iran and prevent it from developing the bomb without bombardment? Could anything be better?

But talking about an action against Iran is not our main problem. For or against bombardment, Israel never thinks in terms of beyond tomorrow. It acts like a person who puts buckets in a house with a leaky roof instead of thoroughly fixing the roof. So we bombard Iran, and even if it is successful and we do not have to pay a heavy price for it - a dubious scenario - what happens then? What will happen when Egypt wants a bomb? Will we bomb again? And Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Iraq? And perhaps Hezbollah has some "dirty bomb" or other? And will we "allow" Turkey to go nuclear? Will we bombard and bombard, and live forever by bombardment?

Israel can fix the holes in the roof only if it seriously tries to be accepted in the region. Such acceptance will be the only guarantee of its existence beyond the next bombardment. A real chance for this was created in the Arab peace initiative that Israel is ignoring in intolerable arrogance. Our national effort continues to be aimed only toward expanding the range of the F-15 and options for in-flight refueling. Nothing has been done in the opposite direction - grounding the planes and refueling diplomatically.

Imagine peace with the Palestinians, the Syrians and most of the Arab world. Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dare threaten Israel then, too? On what pretext? Imagine that Israel announces it will not attack Iran until all other means have been exhausted, simultaneously calling on the West to talk to Iran about security guarantees. Does it sound unreal? Will we not contribute more this way to reduce the danger? After all, Iran has so far shown itself to be a rational country, not insane. We refuse to pay the price of peace; we continue to prefer the price of bombardment. But this time the price might be a particularly heavy one.

Israel's pyromania may now have reached the most dangerous point in its history, in the face of Iranian pyromania, just when an alternative track has opened up. The dread of the implications of an attack on Iran may be exaggerated. We might succeed again. And what if we do not? But then again, what if we do? 
 
 

[bigron]

Can Bush Attack Iran With Oil at $140 per Barrel?

By Jim Lobe, IPS News

Posted on July 7, 2008,

http://www.alternet.org/story/90522/


If U.S. President George W. Bush wants to boost Republican chances of holding on to the White House and keeping Democratic gains in Congress to a minimum in the November elections, he might consider taking an attack on Iran before the end of his administration "off the table."

Of course, that's probably the last thing Bush -- and his particularly belligerent vice president, Dick Cheney -- will do.

But there's a little doubt that forswearing military action against Tehran should ease the upwards pressure on world oil prices -- which hit a historic high Monday of more than 143 dollars per barrel before falling back to 140 dollars -- and thus offer at least some reprieve to the U.S. consumer at a time when record gasoline prices appear to be driving widespread popular dismay with the state of the U.S. economy.

"(I)f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect," wrote Michael Klare in this week's Nation magazine and author of a new book, "Rising Power, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy". "(D)eclare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran."

While oil analysts say that prospects of a continuing decline in the dollar no doubt played an important role in recent price jumps, they also pointed to last week's pointed reaction by the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, to recent U.S. and Israeli threats to attack Tehran's nuclear facilities, as well as his assessment that those threats should be taken seriously, as a major factor.

In addition to retaliating against any regional powers, presumably including Israel, which take part in such an attack, Jafari warned that Tehran would "definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz," after which, he added, "the oil price will rise very considerably, and this is among the factors deterring the enemies."

Indeed, even without an attack, continuing tension involving Iran's nuclear program will almost certainly contribute to a continued rise in oil prices to as high as 170 dollars a barrel in the coming weeks and months, OPEC's president, Chakib Khelil, said during a conference in Madrid.

World oil prices have risen by nearly 50 percent since the beginning of 2008 and nearly doubled over the past year. Analysts have argued over how much of that increase is due to structural factors in the world economy -- such as growing demand in middle-income countries and the depreciating dollar that would tend to make the price increase permanent -- and how much is related to worries about possible supply disruptions arising from the kind of conflict that has plagued the Niger Delta region in Nigeria, terrorist attacks by al Qaeda in the Gulf, economic or other sanctions against key oil-producers, or war.

The latter risk factors, according to some analysts here, could account for as much as 50 dollars of the total current price, although most believe that the figure is about half that.

How much is due to the uncertainty about Iran is also a matter of considerable debate. Many point to the unprecedented 11-dollar one-day spike in oil prices -- from 128 dollars to 139 dollars a barrel -- that took place Jun. 6 after Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an Israeli attack on Tehran's nuclear facilities was "unavoidable" if international pressure did not succeed in persuading it to freeze its uranium enrichment program.

While that incident offered the most spectacular suggestion of a relationship between threats against Iran and the price of oil, most analysts believe the effect is somewhat more modest, albeit still quite real.

"I don't think it would be unreasonable to say it could be a few dollars (out of the current 140 dollars a barrel)," Paul Saunders, an energy expert who directs the Nixon Centre here, told IPS.

And in Congressional testimony just last week, Daniel Yergin, a long-time analyst and historian of the oil industry, observed, "You see the Iranians make a ...bellicose statement, and you see the price of oil go up five or seven dollars."

That is not a new pattern, according to Klare, who said the possibility of a 100-dollar-a-barrel price first loomed nearly two years ago amid speculation during the July-August war between Israel and Hezbollah that the conflict could spread to Iran. At that time, the price hovered around 75 dollars a barrel before falling back to just over 50 dollars a barrel in early 2007, its lowest point in the last 18 months.

Even though the price retreated after Mofaz' remarks, events of the past 10 days have helped drive up the price to historic levels. These include the publication of a front-page New York Times article about a massive Israeli air exercise that purportedly simulated an attack on Iran, and a New Yorker article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh about a 400-million-dollar covert action program directed against Tehran; and public warnings by U.S. hawks close to Cheney's office that either the Israelis or the U.S. would attack Iran between the November elections and the inaugural of a new president in January 2009; as well as Jafari's weekend remarks.

Klare believes that the oil markets believe "there's at least a 50-percent chance that the U.S. and/or Israel will attack Iran before Bush leaves office and that Iran will retaliate (in ways) ...that would push oil prices to 200 dollars a barrel and above" which is why speculators are buying oil futures now at 140 dollars and even 150 dollars a barrel.

"The run-up in the price today will only encourage more speculators to get into the act, unless the administration makes clear it has no intention of attacking Iran and will force Israel to make a similar declaration, neither of which is likely to occur," he told IPS.

Meanwhile, the voting public is clearly worried about where oil prices are going. Seven out of 10 people told a Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll last week that their families had suffered "financial hardship" as a result of the price increases, and more than eight in 10 blamed the administration for "not (having) done enough" to ease the impact.

According to a Pew Research Centre poll taken earlier in June, three of four voters believe gas prices will be "very important" in deciding who to vote for -- a larger percentage than those who cite terrorism or the Iraq war. By margins of nearly 20 percent, those same voters said they had more confidence in Democrats and Sen. Barack Obama than they did in Republicans and Sen. John McCain to deal with the issue.

That's one reason why most analysts rate the chances of an attack by either country before the election as quite low. Others accept Janari's logic that the likely impact on oil prices before or after the elections make an attack improbable.

"I think one of the things that makes (an attack) a lot less likely is what it will actually do to the oil price," said the Nixon Centre's Saunders.

Jim Lobe is the Washington bureau chief for Inter Press Service. His blog on U.S. foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

© 2008 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/90522/

[bigron]

Iran must grasp the world’s offer


Published: July 6 2008 18:57 |

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e01b1a4-4b82-11dd-a490-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Iran’s dispute with the international community over its nuclear programme remains deadlocked. For the last two years, the world’s major powers have offered Iran a package of economic and political incentives to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, a programme which some western powers believe is ultimately aimed at producing a nuclear bomb. But Iran’s position – that it wants to go on with uranium enrichment and is interested only in producing civil nuclear energy – remains unchanged.

Still, there are indications that the Iranian regime is thinking harder about the international offer. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator will this month meet Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, to try to break the stalemate. There is no guarantee that the meeting will end in success. But the Iranians have not yet given a definitive “No” to the west’s package.

This month’s meeting will come at a critical juncture in the years of negotiation between Iran and the west. Thus far, this stand-off has contained little drama. But there are growing fears in the west that Israel may decide to launch a military strike this autumn against Iran’s nuclear facilities. There are numerous reasons why Israel may be considering this. Israel thinks that Iran is far closer to getting a nuclear weapon than other western powers believe. Israel fears too – perhaps wrongly – that if Barack Obama is elected US president this November, it will lose US political support in its struggle with Iran.

An Israeli attack on Iran would be disastrous for the region and the world. It could only delay, not halt, Iran’s uranium enrichment plan and give it far greater justification. It could drag the US into a regional war and polarise the region for decades.

Such an attack must not happen. Instead, all sides must do everything to ensure that the diplomatic route is successful. Iran should begin to grasp the international community’s incentives package. This offer is generous, pledging a state-of-the-art civil nuclear programme and significant economic rewards if Iran suspends uranium enrichment. At the same time, the US must look at what it can do to bolster the negotiations with Iran, whether by opening up diplomatic negotiations with Tehran or extending further security guarantees.

For now, Iran is sending mixed signals which suggest its game plan is to delay, rather than resolve, the crisis. But there are also signs of a heated debate within the Iranian regime about the direction to take. The hope must be that the debate is won by those who want to start some serious talking.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[bigron]

Iran: War or Privatization: All Out War or "Economic Conquest"?


By Michel Chossudovsky
 
Global Research, July 4, 2008
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JRgcIe2TKn0Pm9b2nfyJf3qCnKNWzD1f-TpTLoj0jIMNkyk72d4Es1pCLQm6SymRpgtV9jmaHHq0S9xUjbf-Do2H-lYaFqQI1pP9KsosWCycHrOWZsEUk630lJvV9MBlhHoqNys5HMQb_H3iD5qmOkL1uWzlgie9DzSk2eQVEqU=


Is the war against Iran on hold?

Tehran is to allow foreign investors, in what might be interpreted as an overture to the West, to acquire full ownership of Iran's State enterprises in the context of a far-reaching "free market" style privatization program.

With the price of crude oil at 140 dollars a barrel, the Iranian State is not in a financial straightjacket as in the case of most indebted developing countries, obliged by their creditors to sell their State assets to pay off a mounting external debt.

What are the political motivations behind this measure? And why Now?

Several Western companies have already been approached. Tehran will allow foreign capital  "to purchase unlimited shares of state-run enterprises which are in the process of being sold off".

While Iran's privatization program was launched during the government of Mohammed Khatami  in the late 1990s, the recent sell-off of shares in key state enterprises points to a new economic design. The underlying measure is far-reaching. It goes beyond the prevailing privatization framework applied in several developing countries within America's sphere of influence:

"The move is designed to attract greater foreign investment and is part of the country's sweeping economic liberalization program.

Iran will no longer make a distinction between domestic and foreign firms that wish to purchase state-run companies as long as the combined foreign ownership in any particular industry does not exceed 35%. ... As an example, a foreign firm may purchase an Iranian steel company but it would not be allowed to buy every business enterprise in Iran's steel industry.

Among the new incentive measures announced, foreign firms may also transfer their annual profit from their Iranian company out of the country in any currency they wish." (Iran to Allow 100% Foreign Ownership, Press TV, June 30, 2008)

It is important to carefully analyze this decision. The timing of the announcement by Iran's Privatization Organization (IPO) coincides with mounting US-Israeli threats to wage an all out war against Iran.

Moreover, the divestment program is compliant with the demands of the "Washington Consensus". The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed, with some reservations, that Tehran is committed to a "continued transition toward a viable and efficient market economy" while also implying .that the building of "investor confidence" requires an acceleration of  the privatization program.

In its May 2008 Review (Art. 4 Consultations), the IMF praised Tehran for its divestment program, which essentially transfers the ownership of State assets into private hands, while also underscoring that the program was being carried out in a speedily and efficient fashion.

Under the threat of war, is this renewed initiative by Tehran to privatize key industries intended to meet the demands of the Bush Administration?

The Bretton Woods institutions are known to directly serve US interests. They are not only in liaison with Wall Street and the US Treasury, they are also in contact with the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO. The IMF-World Bank are often consulted prior to the onslaught of a major war. In the war's aftermath, they are involved in providing "post conflict reconstruction" loans.  In this regard, the World Bank is a key player in channelling "foreign aid" to both Iraq and Afghanistan.   

The privatization measures suggest that Iran is prepared to allow foreign capital to gain control over important key sectors of the Iranian economy.

According to the chairman of the Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO) Gholamreza Kord-Zanganeh some 230 state-run companies are slated to be privatized by end of the Iranian year (March 2009). The shares of some 177 State companies were offered on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the last Iranian year (ending March 2008).

Already the state-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) has indicated that "a number of foreign telcos have expressed an interest in acquiring its shares when the government sells off part of its interest in a month’s time. Local press reports did not name the potential investors. TCI has a monopoly in Iran’s fixed line market and is also the country’s largest cellular operator via its subsidiary MCI." France's Alcatel, the MTN Group of South Africa and Germany's Siemens already have sizeable interests in Iran's telecom industry.

Other key sectors of the economy including aluminum, copper, the iron and steel industry have recently been put up for privatization, with the shares of State companies floated on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) 

More than Meets the Eye

Is this decision by Tehran to implement a far-reaching privatization program, in any way connected with continuous US saber rattling and diplomatic arm twisting?

At first sight it appears that Tehran is caving into Washington's demands so as to avoid an all out war. 

Iran's assets would be handed over on a silver platter to Western foreign investors, without the need for America to conquer new economic frontiers through military means? 

But there is more than meets the eye.

Washington has no interest in the imposition of a privatization program on Iran, as an "alternative" to an all out war. In fact quite the opposite. There are indications that the Bush adminstration's main objective is to stall the privatization program.

Rather than being applauded by Washington as a move in the right direction, Tehran's privatization program coincides with the launching (May 2008) of a far-reaching resolution in the US Congress (H.CON. RES 362), calling for the imposition of Worldwide financial sanctions directed against Iran:

"[H. CON. RES. 362] urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, ... international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks; ... energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and all companies which continue to do business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps." (See full text of H.CON RES 362) (emphasis added)

The resolution further demands that "the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran .... prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program."(emphasis added)

Were these economic sanctions to be carried out and enforced, they would paralyze trade and monetary transactions. Needless to say they would also undermine Iran's privatization program and foreclose the transfer of Iranian State assets into foreign hands.

Economic Warfare

Now why on earth would the Bush administration be opposed to the adoption of a neoliberal-style divestment program, which would strip the Islamic Republic of some of its most profitable assets?

If "economic conquest" is the ultimate objective of a profit driven military agenda, what then is the purpose of bombing Iran, when Iran actually accepts to hand over its assets at rock-bottom prices to foreign investors, in much the same way as in other compliant developing countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil,  etc?

The largest foreign investors in Iran are China and Russia.

While US companies are notoriously absent from the list of foreign direct investors, Germany, Italy and Japan have significant investment interests in oil and gas, the petrochemical industry, power generation and construction as well as in banking. Together with China and Russia, they are the main beneficiaries of the privatization program.

One of the main objectives of the proposed economic sanctions under H. RES CON 362 is to prevent foreign companies (including those from the European Union and Japan) , from acquiring a greater stake in the Iranian economy under Tehran's divestment program.

Other countries with major foreign investment interests in Iran include France, India, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland. Sweden's Svedala Industri has major interests in Iran’s copper mines.

France, Japan and Korea have interests in the automobile industry, in the form of licensing agreements with Iranian auto manufacturers.

Italy's ENI Oil Company is involved in the development of phases 4 and 5 of the South Pars oil field amounting to 3.8 billion dollars.(See Iranian Privatisation Organization, 2008 report) Total and the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Shell are involved in natural gas.

While the privatization process does not allow for the divestment of Iran's State oil company, it creates an environment which favors foreign investment by a number of countries including China, Russia, Italy, Malaysia, etc. in oil refinery, the petrochemical industry, the oil services economy as well as oil and gas infrastructure including exploration and oil-gas pipelines.

While several US corporations are (unofficially) conducting business in Iran, the US trade sanctions regime (renewed under the Bush adminstration) outlaws US  citizens and companies from doing business in Iran. In other words, US corporations would not be allowed to acquire Iranian State assets under the privatisation program unless the US trade sanctions regime were to be lifted.

Moreover, all foreign firms are treated on an equal footing. There is no preferential treatment for US companies, no corrupt colonial style arrangement as in war-torn Iraq, which favors the outright transfer of ownership and control of entire sectors of the national economy to a handful of US corporations. 

In other words, Tehran's privatization program does not serve US economic and strategic interests. It tends to favor countries which have longstanding trade and investment relations with the Islamic Republic. 

It favors Chinese, Russian, European and Japanese investors at the expense of the USA.

It undermines and weakens American hegemony. It goes against Washington's design to foster a "unipolar" New World Order through both economic and military means.   

And that is why Washington wants to shunt this program through a Worldwide economic sanctions regime which would, if implemented, paralyze trade, investment and monetary flows with Iran. 

The proposed economic sanctions' regime under H. CON 362 is intended to isolate Iran and prevent the transfer of Iranian assets into the hands of competing economic powers including China, Russia, the European Union and Japan.  It is tantamount to a declaration of war.

In a bitter irony, H CON 362 serves to undermine the economic interests of several of America's allies. The Resolution would prevent them from positioning themselves in the Middle East, despite the fact that these allies (e.g. France and Germany) are also involved through NATO in the planning of the war on Iran.

War and Financial Manipulation

The Bush administration has opted for an all out war on Iran in alliance with Israel, with a view to establishing an exclusive American sphere of influence in the Middle East.

A US-Israel sponsored military operation directed against Iran, would largely backlash on the economic and financial interests of several of America's allies, including Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

More generally, a war on Iran would hit corporate interests involved in the civilian economy as opposed to those more directly linked to the military industrial complex and the war economy. It would undermine local and regional economies, the consumer manufacturing and services economy, the automobile industry, the airlines, the tourist and leisure economy, etc.

Moreover, an all out war feeds the profit driven agenda of global banking, including the institutional speculators in the energy market, the powerful Anglo-American oil giants and America's weapons producers, the big five defense contractors plus British Aerospace Systems Corporation, which play a major role in the formulation of US foreign policy and the Pentagon's military agenda, not to mention the gamut of mercenary companies and military contractors.

A small number of global corporations and financial institutions feed on war and destruction to the detriment of  important sectors of economic activity, Broadly speaking, the bulk of the civilian economy is threatened.

What we are dealing with are conflicts and rivalries within the upper echelons of the global capitalist system, largely opposing those corporate players which have a direct interest in the war to the broader capitalist economy which ultimately depends on the continued development of civilian consumer and investment demand. 

These vested interests in a profit driven war also feed on economic recession and financial dislocation. The process of economic collapse which results, for instance, from the speculative hikes in oil and food prices, triggers bankruptcies on a large scale, which ultimately enable a handful of global corporations and financial institutions to "pick up the pieces" and consolidate their global control over the real economy as well as over the international monetary system.

Financial manipulation is intimately related to military decision-making. Major banks and financial institutions have links to the military and intelligence apparatus. Advanced knowledge or inside information by these institutional speculators regarding specific "false flag" terrorist attacks, or military operations in the Middle East is the source of tremendous speculative gains.

Both the war agenda and the proposed economic sanctions regime trigger, quite deliberately, a global atmosphere of insecurity and economic chaos.

In turn, the institutional speculators in London, Chicago and New York not only feed on economic chaos and uncertainty, their manipulative actions in the energy and commodity markets contribute to spearheading large sectors of the civilian economy into bankruptcy. 

The economic and financial dislocations resulting from the hikes in the prices of crude oil and food staples are the source of financial gains by a handful of global actors. Speculators are not concerned with the far-reaching consequences of a broader Middle East war, which could evolve into a World War Three scenario.

The pro-Israeli lobby in the US indirectly serves these powerful financial interests.  In the current context, Israel is an ally with significant military capabilities which serves America's broader objective in the Middle East. Washington, however, has little concern for the security of Israel, which in the case of a war on Iran would be the first target of retaliatory military action by Tehran.

The broader US objective consists in establishing, through military and economic means, an exclusive US sphere of influence throughout the Middle East.

 

[DCUBED]

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/US_holds_navy_exercise_after_Iran_0707.html

US holds Navy exercise after Iran comments on Gulf

DUBAI, July 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world's largest oil-exporting region.

"The aim of Exercise Stake Net is to practise the tactics and procedures of protecting maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations," Commodore Peter Hudson said in a U.S. Fifth Fleet statement.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in remarks published late last month that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its nuclear programme has risen since a report last month said Israel had practised such a strike.

Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, said last week the United States would not allow Iran to block the Gulf.

Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, has helped propel oil prices over $140 a barrel.

Two U.S. vessels were taking part in the exercise alongside a British warship and one from Bahrain, a Gulf Arab ally which hosts the Fifth Fleet. "Stake Net seeks to help ensure a lawful maritime order as well as improve relationships between regional partners," the fleet's statement said.

Western powers say they fear Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear programme. Tehran says the work aims to generate electricity.

A cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots at two unidentified boats which approached it in the Gulf in April. In January, the United States said five small Iranian speedboats aggressively approached three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz and a radio message was transmitted, warning they could explode.

Iran said its boats were simply trying to identify the U.S. vessels and military experts have since said the warning may have come from an independent radio operator.

[SteveCA]

Not sure if this is the place for it, but what do You all make of this?

http://www.actionwars.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=100

[larsonstdoc]

  Thank you for all the articles.  Bolton, Mr. S And M, is wrong saying it will be after election day.  I say between now and 8-8-08 (the first day of the Olympics).

[bigron]

Iran to "hit Tel Aviv, U.S. ships" if attacked


Tue Jul 8, 2008 7:29am EDT
By Parisa Hafezi
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSLYO82850220080708?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest


TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards.

The United States and its allies suspect Iran is trying to build nuclear bombs. Tehran says its program is peaceful.

"The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned," Shirazi was quoted as saying.

Shirazi, a mid-level cleric, is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards.

"The Iranian nation will never accept bullying. The Iranian nation is a nation of believers which believes in jihad and martyrdom. No army in the world can confront it," he added.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, declined to comment on the threat to hit Tel Aviv, saying only: "Shirazi's words speak for themselves."

Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb. The United States says it wants to resolve the dispute by diplomacy but has not ruled out military action.

In April, Israel's Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who is a former army general and defense minister, told Israeli media: "An Iranian attack will prompt a severe reaction from Israel, which will destroy the Iranian nation."

Shirazi's comments intensified a war of words that has raised fears of military confrontation and helped boost world oil prices to record highs in recent weeks.

"We will make the enemy regret threatening Iran," Mohammad Hejazi, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency on Tuesday.

ISRAELI MARKETS UNMOVED

Tel Aviv is an Israeli coastal metropolis of about 2 million people. It was hit in 1991 by Scud missiles launched by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during a U.S.-led war with Baghdad.

Unlike other major Israeli cities such as Jerusalem and Haifa, it is home to relatively few Arabs.

The latest Iranian threats had little immediate impact on financial markets in Israel.

"This has no relevance on dollar-shekel trade. I assume if we see a strike, there will be a reaction," said Neil Corney, treasurer for Citigroup's Israel office in Tel Aviv.

"All this is sabre-rattling and Israel is trying to pressure the world to put some serious economic sanctions on Iran."

Joel Kirsch, head of equities trading at the Leader Capital Markets brokerage in Tel Aviv linked a market drop on Tuesday to banks selling off in Asia, not tension with Iran. "The conflict with Iran is somewhat priced into the market," he said.

Iran has previously threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if it comes under attack. About 40 percent of globally traded oil moves through the Gulf waterway.

The Revolutionary Guards' commander of artillery and missile units, Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, said 50 brigades of his forces had been equipped with what he called smart cluster munitions.

"All our arms, bullets and rockets are on alert so that we would defend the Islamic Republic's territory," Hemayet daily quoted him as saying.

Senior officials from six world powers held a conference call on Monday to discuss the response Iran delivered on Friday to a revised package of incentives to curb its nuclear work.

The United States, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany offered the package last month and said Iran must suspend its uranium enrichment work before formal talks on implementing it.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium and rejected as "illegitimate" a demand by major powers that it do so.

[bigron]

July 8, 2008

Deconstructing the Anti-Iran Resolutions
 
by Muhammad Sahimi


The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a resolution (HR 362) that calls on the Bush administration to take strong action against Iran, including a naval blockade of its ports. A similar resolution is being considered by the Senate (SR 580). The two resolutions are supposedly non-binding. They also mention explicitly that they are not granting the Bush administration any authorization to stage military attacks on Iran. Their language, however, is warlike. In particular, a naval blockade of Iran's ports is certainly tantamount to a declaration of war.

One would expect that, on a matter as crucial as dealing with an important and influential Islamic nation such as Iran, especially after all the lies and exaggerations that were sold to the public in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, the resolutions that are being considered would speak the truth about Iran. That is not the case, though. Both resolutions are replete with factual errors, exaggerations, half-truths, and even outright lies. Below, actual sentences from the two resolutions are in italics; my analysis follows in normal text.

The Senate Resolution

"For nearly 20 years Iran had a covert nuclear program, until the program was revealed by an opposition group in Iran in 2002."

Outright lie: Iran did not have any covert nuclear program for nearly 20 years. What it did have was a small nuclear research program that was safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). What Iran did not declare to the IAEA for many years was the construction of the Natanz facility for uranium enrichment, which was not illegal. The subsidiary arrangements part of Iran's Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA stipulates that Iran was obligated to inform the agency of the existence of any nuclear facility only 180 days prior to introducing any nuclear materials into the facility. In February 2003 Iran did just that, then introduced nuclear materials into that facility in summer of 2003.

Interestingly, the resolution does not name the "opposition group," because it would be embarrassing to mention that the group is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group despised by the Iranian people and listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization. The MEK has been in exile since 1981. It spied on Iran during its war with Iraq and helped Saddam Hussein's regime to ruthlessly suppress the uprisings by the Kurds and Shi'ites after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that the government of Iran has engaged in such covert activities as the illicit importation of uranium hexafluoride, the construction of a uranium enrichment facility, experimentation with plutonium, the importation of centrifuge technology and the construction of centrifuges, and the importation of the design to convert highly enriched uranium gas into a metal and to shape it into the core of a nuclear weapon, as well as significant additional covert nuclear activities."

Lies and exaggerations: The uranium hexafluoride was imported from China, which, like Iran, is an NPT member state. China was supposed to report the transaction, but it did not for many years. The matter has now been completely clarified, and the material is safeguarded by the IAEA.

As explained above, construction of the uranium enrichment facility was not an illicit activity, because Iran had no legal obligation to declare it. Indeed, the IAEA has never ever called the construction "illicit" or "illegal."

Iran has never done any experiment with plutonium, except when the shah was in power. What the Islamic Republic did do was experiment with polonium-210, not plutonium. In its February 2008 report to the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IAEA, the agency declared its satisfaction with the resolution of the issue.

Manufacturing or importing centrifuges does not violate the Safeguards Agreement. In fact, centrifuges are not even covered by the Safeguards Agreement, because they are also used for many non-nuclear purposes. Only when the centrifuges are to be used for nuclear experimentation is Iran legally obligated to report to the IAEA the intention for the tests 90 days before carrying them out. The IAEA has been fully informed by Iran, in due time, of all such activities.

As for the document for converting uranium fluoride to uranium metal, Iran had claimed that the A.Q. Khan network gave the document to Iran, without Iran asking for it. In its May 2008 report, the IAEA confirmed Iran's contention by reporting that the government of Pakistan had confirmed the existence of an identical document there. From a practical point of view, since Iran has had for many years, with full knowledge of the IAEA, a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, it does not make sense for it to pursue such a process.

The documents for designing a nuclear warhead are the subject of negotiations between Iran and the IAEA. Iran claims that the documents are not authentic, and it has demanded to see their original copies, which the IAEA cannot provide. There is considerable doubt about their authenticity.

Most importantly, in a February 2008 report to the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general, declared that, "We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran's enrichment program."

"The government of Iran continues to expand the number of centrifuges at its enrichment facility and to enrich uranium in defiance of 3 binding United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment activities."

Incomplete story: Sending Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council had no legal basis, because the IAEA has never found Iran in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or in breaches of its Safeguards Agreement that could "further a military purpose," the precise language of the agreement.

The reason for sending Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council was its rejection of the demand by the BoG of the IAEA to suspend its enrichment activity. The IAEA and its BoG have, however, no legal authority to make such a demand. Therefore, there was absolutely no legal basis for sending Iran's dossier to the UN Security Council.

The UN Security Council could not issue its resolutions against Iran under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which is exclusively for the cases that pose a threat to the peace or international security, unless it first identifies, as the UN Charter demands, the threat. However, the UN Security Council refused to identify the threat. Instead, it merely referred to the resolution of the BoG of the IAEA which, as discussed above, had no legal basis.

In addition, Iran has stated repeatedly that, if the nuclear dossier is sent back to the IAEA, it will be willing to negotiate a temporary suspension of its enrichment program. In fact, Iran did suspend, on a voluntary basis, its enrichment activities from October 2003 to February 2006.

"The government of Iran has announced its intention to begin the installation of 6,000 advanced centrifuges, which, when operational, will dramatically reduce the time that it will take Iran to enrich uranium."

Misrepresentation: In compliance with its Safeguards obligations, Iran has declared to the IAEA its intentions for installing more centrifuges. There is also nothing illegal about adding more centrifuges, so long as it is declared to the IAEA. Moreover, the manufacturing and installation of the 6,000 advanced centrifuges will take years, not the short time that the resolution seems to imply.

"The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reports that the government of Iran was secretly working on the design and manufacture of a nuclear warhead until at least 2003 and that Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon as early as late 2009."

Exaggerations: The NIE never presented any hard evidence that Iran was actually involved in the design of a nuclear warhead before 2003. Even if Iran was working on the problem before 2003, it was only at the design stage, as Iran had no highly enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear warhead. In fact, it will not have highly enriched uranium any time soon, if ever.

As for manufacturing a bomb, there must first be an intention, but the IAEA has certified time and again that there is no evidence for such a goal. At the same time, 2009 is a worst-case scenario pushed by Israel. Most estimates, including the NIE's, are from 2010-2015. But, most importantly, Iran cannot use its present facility to produce highly enriched uranium, unless it leaves the NPT and expels the IAEA inspectors. Iran has said repeatedly that it has no intention of leaving the NPT.

"Allowing the government of Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability would pose a grave threat to international peace and security."

False: As long as Iran's enrichment facilities are safeguarded by the IAEA, their potential for making a nuclear weapon is latent and under tight control. In addition, Iran has indicated its willingness to sign the Additional Protocol, which will grant the IAEA much more intrusive power for inspection. In fact, Iran voluntarily carried out the provisions of the Additional Protocol from October 2003 to August 2005. Finally, in 2005 Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding production of nuclear weapons.

"If it were allowed to obtain a nuclear weapons capability, the government of Iran could share its nuclear technology, raising the frightening prospect that terrorist groups and rogue regimes might possess nuclear weapons capabilities."

False: Iran has been accused of supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, but it has never been accused of sharing conventional weapons technology with them. So why would Iran share nuclear technology with any group or nation?

In addition, any nuclear material manufactured in any nation has a "genetic" signature. If it is used anywhere, experts can identify its origin. Iranian leaders are fully aware that if they provide nuclear materials to any terrorist group, their origin can be identified, leading to massive retaliation by the international community.

"Allowing the government of Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability would severely undermine the global nuclear non-proliferation regime that, for more than 4 decades, has contained the spread of nuclear weapons."

False: The non-proliferation regime has already been greatly weakened not by Iran, but by three U.S. allies and friends: Israel, Pakistan, and India, none of which is an NPT member state. Even if there were a military dimension to Iran's nuclear program, it would be due to the nuclear arsenals of Israel and Pakistan and the presence of the U.S. forces in the Middle East. In addition, if the U.S. transfers its nuclear technology to India, it would be violating its own NPT and non-proliferation obligations.

"It is likely that one or more Arab states would respond to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability by following Iran's example, and several Arab states have already announced their intentions to pursue 'peaceful nuclear' programs."

Half-truth: Three Arab states that may seek peaceful nuclear programs are U.S. allies. One is Egypt, with which the U.S. has close military, intelligence, and economic relations, providing it with nearly $2 billion in annual aid, which is critical to Egypt's solvency. Why doesn't the U.S. discourage Egypt's intentions?

The second nation is Saudi Arabia, the known oil reserves of which are twice as large as Iran's, with a population 1/3 of Iran's. Why can't the U.S. use the same logic with the Saudis that it has tried to use with Iran by telling them, "You have too much oil and, therefore, no need for nuclear technology for the foreseeable future." In addition, if this really concerns the U.S., why has it not protested the Saudi agreement with France for obtaining nuclear technology?

The third nation is the small island of Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet is headquartered. Bahrain has no conceivable need for nuclear reactors. If the U.S. is worried about the spread of nuclear technology, why has it agreed to sell the technology to Bahrain?

In addition, if the Arab nations did not try to acquire nuclear weapons after Israel developed them in the 1960s, why would they want to do so in reaction to the peaceful nuclear program of Iran, a Muslim nation?

"Allowing the government of Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability would directly threaten Europe and ultimately the United States because Iran already has missiles than can reach parts of Europe and is seeking to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles."

Outright lies: Iran has no program for intercontinental missiles. In fact, the Arms Control Association stated in October 2007 that Iran could not develop an intercontinental missile by 2015, even if it wanted to. Iran's present missiles cannot reach any part of Europe except Turkey, its neighbor. Iran's missiles are purely defensive, because such missiles are offensive weapons only if the nation that owns them has the ability to project power far beyond its borders. Iran does not have such ability, nor is there any evidence that it aspires to have it. In addition, Europe is Iran's most significant commercial partner. Why would Iran attack its commercial partners?

"The government of Iran has repeatedly called for the elimination of our ally, Israel."

False: Aside from some inconsequential and often deliberately mistranslated rhetoric, Iran has never had any plan to attack Israel. It actually purchased weapons from Israel during its war with Iraq, and Iranian oil is reaching Israel indirectly. Iranian leaders are also fully aware that any attack on Israel will bring a massive counterattack by both Israel and the U.S. In fact, many Iranian leaders have stated repeatedly that it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their own conflict.

"The government of Iran has advocated that the United States withdraw its presence from the Middle East."

Misrepresentation: Iran is not the only nation that has called on the U.S. to withdraw its forces from the Middle East. Many nations consider the presence of the U.S. forces to be the greatest source of instability in the Middle East. Moreover, why is Iran's advocacy an "offense"?

"The United States, the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany have offered to negotiate a significant package of economic, diplomatic, and security incentives if Iran complies with the Security Council's demand to suspend uranium enrichment.

"The government of Iran has consistently refused such offers."

Half-truth: Iran has stated repeatedly that it is willing to negotiate its entire nuclear program without any preconditions and that a suspension of its uranium enrichment program should be an outcome of the negotiations, rather than a precondition. Iran did freeze its enrichment activities from October 2003 to February 2006, but because Europe did not reward Iran for the suspension, as it had promised to, Iran stopped the suspension. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki just announced that Iran will soon start negotiating with the 5+1 group.

The House Resolution

Many paragraphs in the House Resolution are similar to those in the Senate version and therefore require no further response. I analyze only those statements that seem to add fuel to the fire of the threat of an attack on Iran.

"Iran has used its banking system, including the Central Bank of Iran, to support its proliferation efforts and its assistance to terrorist groups, leading the Department of Treasury to designate four large Iranian banks proliferators and supporters of terrorism."

Exaggeration: The Treasury Department has never presented any evidence that Iran uses its banking system for proliferation purposes. In addition, the use of Iran's banking system to fund Hamas and Hezbollah has been greatly exaggerated at the very least. See, in particular, the article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on June 26, 2008, "Are Sanctioned Iranian Banks Actually Sponsoring Anti-Western Terror?" which questioned the Treasury Department's claims about Bank Melli of Iran.

"Iran's support for Hezbollah has enabled that group to wage war against the government and people of Lebanon, leading to its political domination of that country."

Outright lies: Hezbollah and its allies among the Christian Maronites (the March 8 Coalition) have a large number of representatives in the Lebanese parliament. With the mediation of our ally Qatar, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government recently resolved all of their differences. Hezbollah enjoys strong support among a very significant portion of the population. It is, therefore, not clear who are the "government and people of Lebanon" that the resolution is referring to.

"Iran's support for Hamas has enabled it to illegally seize control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, and to continuously bombard Israeli civilians with rockets and mortars."

Outright lies: First of all, Hamas won elections that were certified as democratic by former President Jimmy Carter. It took control of Gaza, only because the people of Gaza supported it. According to Fatah, the main group in the Palestinian Authority, many wealthy Saudis provide far more financial aid to Hamas than Iran ever has, but the U.S. is silent about this for the obvious reasons.

"Iran continues to provide training, weapons, and financial assistance to Shia militants inside of Iraq and antigovernment warlords in Afghanistan.

"Those Shia militant groups and Afghan warlords use Iranian training, weapons, and financing to attack American and allied forces trying to support the legitimate governments of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Outright lies: The U.S. has never presented any concrete evidence that Iran provides weapons to any group in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Shi'ite groups that represent the legitimate government of Iraq are the same groups that spent years in Iran in exile. Iran was instrumental recently in preventing Moqtada al-Sadr's militia from starting a full rebellion against the government of Iraq.

As for Afghanistan, Iran was instrumental in helping the U.S. to overthrow the Taliban. Iran's ally, the Northern Alliance, which Iran had supported for years, was the first group to reach Kabul and overthrow the Taliban. According to the U.S. representative James Dobbins at the conference on the Future of Afghanistan in December 2001, Iran was instrumental in helping the National Unity Government of President Hamid Karzai to form. After the U.S., no nation has invested more in rebuilding Afghanistan than Iran. Above all, both the Taliban and al-Qaeda are archenemies of Iran.

"Iran is further destabilizing the Middle East by underwriting a massive rearmament by Syria."

Outright lie: With mediation by our ally Turkey, Syria and Israel have been secretly negotiating a peace agreement. Syria's only other enemy, the regime of Saddam Hussein, is gone. Therefore, what is this imaginary rearmament for? Where is the evidence for it? Where is the evidence that Iran is paying for it, even if it exists?

On the other hand, the U.S. has agreed to a massive rearmament of some Arab states and Israel by agreeing to sell them up to $50 billion in modern weapons, hence contributing greatly to the region's arms race and instability.

"Through efforts, Iran seeks to establish regional hegemony, threatens long-standing friends of the United States in the Middle East, and endangers American national security interests."

Exaggeration: Regional hegemony will not be achieved with an Iranian army that has been designed solely to defend Iran, and an air force that belongs in museums.

It is therefore clear that practically every paragraph in the Senate and House resolutions contains factual errors, lies, exaggerations, or half-truths. Iran can be criticized on many fronts, especially for its political and social repression and violating the basic human and civil rights of the Iranian people. But Iran is not a threat to the United States or Israel. It is not anywhere close to having nuclear weapons, even if it wants to.

Therefore, the American public must recognize these resolutions for what they really are: war plans advocated by the War Party and its allies in the pro-Israel lobbies.
 

 
 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/sahimi.php?articleid=13104 

[bigron]

July 8, 2008

Reading Solana in Tehran
 
by Trita Parsi

Conciliatory noises from Tehran over the nuclear issue have left Washington and Brussels baffled and unconvinced of Iran's intentions. Having grown accustomed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's uncompromising language, Tehran's new tone has raised more suspicion than hope among cynics in Western capitals.

At a lunch with a dozen U.S. journalists in New York last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki indicated that Iran would likely respond favorably to the latest proposal by the Security Council's permanent members plus Germany (P5+1). The reason seems to be that alongside an incentive package that didn't differ significantly from a 2006 package that Tehran rejected, a formula may have been agreed upon that would enable all parties to come to the negotiating table without losing face.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana presented the formula orally to the Iranians: For a period of six weeks, Iran would halt any advancement in its enrichment activities while the Security Council would refrain from imposing additional sanctions on Iran. During this period, the Europeans and Iran would negotiate an agreement on the modalities of a full suspension, after which the United States would formally join the talks. This way, Tehran can claim that it didn't suspend as a precondition, but rather as a result of talks, and Washington can claim that it did not join talks until Iran had suspended all enrichment activities.

This formula is not new, however. Why – and whether – Iran would agree to it now has become the subject of much speculation. In typical fashion, Iran has sent contradictory signals. Iran's foreign minister struck an uncharacteristically conciliatory tone in New York, refusing to repeat Tehran's mantra that enrichment is non-negotiable. Days before, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati argued in favor of negotiations in an interview to the conservative daily Jomhouri-ye Eslami.

As a senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, Velayati's words carry particular weight. Not only did Velayati reassert Khamenei's dominion over Iranian foreign policymaking, he indirectly rebuked Ahmadinejad for his radical stance and argued that Iran should negotiate since it had won de facto recognition of its right to enrich. Iran would negotiate from a position of strength, unlike other regional powers that had negotiated out of weakness and had been humiliated by the West accordingly. And since the George W. Bush administration didn't want Iran to respond favorably to the P5+1 proposal, Iran should engage in diplomacy and show the international community that it was not the obstacle to peace, in Velayati's view.

On the other hand, government spokesperson Gholamhossein Elham dampened hopes of a breakthrough by publicly rejecting a freeze on Iran's nuclear activities, asserting that negotiations should take place without Iran agreeing to Solana's formula. According to early reports, Iran's formal response to Solana seemed to have been in line with Elham's – and not Velayati or Mottaki's – statements.

Reactions in the West have varied from skepticism to outright suspicion. Tehran is either putting on a nicer face to win time or it has recognized the dangers of an Israeli attack and is showing greater flexibility as a direct result of the Jewish state's muscle flexing. Tehran only responds to force (or threats of force) and the imposition of new sanctions by the EU combined with Israeli bluster has proven that point, the argument goes.

While Iran certainly may be playing for time – reducing tensions tactically while awaiting the Bush administration's exit from the U.S. political scene could help outmaneuver any effort by Washington to push for additional measures against Iran – the idea that Iran is responding to the threat of force remains, at best, an incomplete explanation for the latest developments.

If the threat of force has caused the Iranians to bend, then it remains a mystery why Tehran didn't succumb two years ago when it was more vulnerable and the credibility of the threat was greater. Today, oil prices are twice as high as they were in 2006, the Bush administration's credibility is at an all-time low, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate has made military strikes more complicated politically, and the public mood in the United States – even among supporters of John McCain – is in favor of diplomacy.

If Velayati's words are to be taken at face value, then confidence rather than fear may have been a more important factor in the prospective Iranian decision.

The debate in Tehran over this issue seems to have centered on whether to continue defying the Security Council or to consolidate Iranian gains. Those favoring the latter have likely realized the Bush administration itself has helped make Iranian defiance successful. Critics argue that the Bush team's lack of credibility and incompetence has made it more difficult to assemble a strong international coalition against Iran. Washington's soft power with the EU under Bush has been negligible, forcing the president to strong-arm his European allies to go along with more stringent economic measures against Iran.

But with President Bush out of the picture by January 2009, the utility and risk of the Ahmadinejad line can change dramatically. Whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain, the next commander in chief will begin his presidency with significantly higher cachet with the Europeans. The hunger for strengthening trans-Atlantic ties and putting the past eight years of bickering behind them is palpable in Europe. One European diplomat indicated to IPS that Europe would even willingly go along with all the measures Bush has called for – as long as they are consulted by the next president.

In addition, Washington could enjoy much greater pull with non-aligned countries, including Asian nations whose unwillingness to go along with sanctions have provided Tehran with an economic escape route.

Consequently, greater interest in the freeze-for-freeze formula may have less to do with recent Israeli bluster and more to do with the greater political pull enjoyed by the next U.S. administration.

Furthermore, proponents of the Solana proposal in Tehran believe that a U.S.-Iran rapprochement can be achieved under the next U.S. administration if diplomacy is pursued. To facilitate the next U.S. president's decision to negotiate, however, Tehran must help improve the political atmosphere and provide the next U.S. commander in chief with a better starting point for diplomacy.

Initiating discussions at this stage could tie both an Obama and a McCain presidency to the diplomatic track. Whoever wins the elections will inherit a less problematic dispute and enjoy greater political maneuverability as a result. This is particularly true for Obama, since the Illinois senator's willingness to pursue diplomacy may not match his political ability to do so if the nuclear deadlock persists.

Mottaki may have alluded to just that in his interview with CNN yesterday. "We hear new voices in America… and we think that the rational thinkers in America can, based on these new approaches, seek reality as it is. We are ready to help them in this endeavor," Mottaki told CNN.

Whether proponents of dialogue in Tehran and Washington can initiate a process of mutual reinforcement remains to be seen. Even if Tehran agrees to the freeze-for-freeze formula, the Iranians will likely only agree to a full suspension if it isn't open-ended, isn't tied to the continuation of talks but progress in talks, and if the aim of the diplomacy is to limit but not eliminate Iran's enrichment capability.

Neither Britain nor France has shown any flexibility on these central points so far. But fearing that a prospective Obama administration will do away with "self-defeating preconditions" and soften Washington's stance on enrichment, the EU might feel compelled to talk to Tehran with the next U.S. administration in mind and not the current. If so, Tehran's softer tone may drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies – an objective all Iranian factions agree upon.

(Inter Press Service)
 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/parsi.php 

[bigron]

Will the U.S. Support Terrorists to Destabilize Iran?

New America Media, News analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 07, 2008 

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=0a3f42cca536140506e6a708be367b98


Editor’s note: All attempts to justify a military attack on Iran have failed and the US is now looking at supporting fringe and terrorist groups to destabilize the country. It won’t work, says NAM contributing writer, William O. Beeman, but it will destabilize the region for years to come. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. The second edition of his book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press.

Correction note: Due to an editing error a previous post of this story mentioned Mr. Michael Rubin was part of a conference entitled "The Unknown Iran: Another Case for Federalism?" in 2005 and he was not. We sincerely apologize for the error.

Elements of the Bush administration have begun to resemble semi-insane Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" with regard to Iran. Reckless and obsessive to destroy Iran’s regime, they fondle their ball bearings, and pursue any scheme that they believe will get rid of the mullahs before the inauguration of the new American president in January 2009.

In desperation, they have turned to supporting fringe-level ethnic separatists—all of whom are terrorists and enemies of the United States who are also hostile to Iran. This strategy is truly the last gasp of a failed Middle East policy. It is ill-conceived, and if continued, will foment continued violence in the region for years without affecting the Iranian regime in any significant way.

Iran’s continuing nuclear program remains the Bush administration’s prime bulwark against the country, but it is a very weak bulwark. Yet there is still no evidence whatever for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Last December’s National Intelligence Estimate stated clearly that no current nuclear military program exists. Moreover, Iran is on the verge of agreeing to discuss proposals with European powers for limiting their nuclear energy program. To this end, they are halting enrichment at current levels as a sign of goodwill. The Iranian press reports that Iranian leaders are urging acceptance of the European proposals, since they feel that the United States is trying to sabotage them in order to create a pretext for action against the country.

Other accusations against Iran are equally feeble. Claims of its support for attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq have failed for lack of any evidence. Iran’s supposed “proxy” attacks on Israel through Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas strain credulity, since these two groups are acknowledged by all credible experts to formulate their political agendas independently from Iran.

Continually frustrated in their attempts to launch any legitimate attack against Iran, Vice President Cheney and a group of die-hard neoconservatives hovering in and around his office, particularly his former Middle East adviser David Wurmser, have long been rumored to be engineering active support for dissident opposition groups who share their goal to overthrow the current Iranian regime. Many of these groups are aligned with non-Persian ethnic factions in Iran, notably Arabs, Kurds, Azerbaijanis and Baluchis. Serious analysts in the region have tended to dismiss these efforts as silly and ineffective. Nevertheless, neoconservative organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Near East Policy and the Hudson Institute have quietly championed the idea that Iran could be successfully dismembered along ethnic lines.

The American Enterprise Institute has long been a hotbed for debate over these plans. In October 2005, it hosted a conference entitled “The Unknown Iran: Another Case for Federalism?” in which the specter of an ethnic dismemberment of Iran was raised. The AEI has subsequently been host to several conclaves where this idea of fomenting ethnic violence has been discussed, in which representatives from dissident groups are regularly invited to hold forth.

The military continues to entertain the dismemberment of Iran and retired military officer and novelist Ralph Peters proposed the idea in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal. His article, ”Blood Borders” champions national independence for every ethnic group in the Middle East, redrawing the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey.

The problem would not be so acute, except for the fact that these groups, now somewhat ineffective, would be truly bad news if provided with significant U.S. aid and weapons. They would never be effective at eliminating the Iranian government, but they could become a source of instability and violence throughout the region for years to come. Because they are basically all anti-American in their orientation, the United States will also be harmed if they are strengthened.

Iran specialists have been aware of these groups for years, and largely discounted them. However, assertions of active United States support for them, awakened by journalist Seymour Hersh in the July 7 issue of the New Yorker, have become real cause for concern. The groups include:

*The M.E.K—Mujaheddin-e Khalq—officially a terrorist group in the United States for having killed Americans before the Revolution. They are Marxist in orientation, and are despised in Iran, since they were protected by Saddam Hussein all during the Iran-Iraq war, and are directly supported by the United States today.

*The PJAK—the “Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan,” a trans-national Kurdish militant organization dedicated to an independent Kurdistan. They are supported by the United States when they launch attacks against Iranian forces, but faulted when they launch attacks against Turkish forces in Turkey.

*The Jundallah—based in Sunni Muslim Balochistan. They are supported by extreme conservative Salafi groups in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi movement also forms the religious philosophy of the Taliban of Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. Claims of U.S. support for Jundallah are now several years old. In April 2007 Brian Ross and Christopher Isham of ABC News reported that the United States had been aiding Jundallah to attack Iranian targets. Jundallah’s leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, appeared on the Iranian service of the Voice of America, where he was identified as "the leader of popular Iranian resistance movement." More disturbing are Jundallah’s wider connections. As Seymour Hersh points out: “Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.”

Sunni Arab separatists in the Southeast Iranian province of Khuzistan, especially in its capital, Ahwaz, have been active since the time of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. There is no identifiable organization as with the other groups above, but Iranian security forces claim that the current round of violence, which includes the assassination of an Iranian Shi’ite cleric, Hojjat ol-Eslam Hesham Seymari on June 26, 2007, were “trained under the umbrella of the Americans in Iraq." The militants have also been linked with the London-based Ahvaz Arab People's Democratic-Popular Front.

The Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, SANAM or GAMOH, led by Mahmudali Chehregani was founded in 1995, and is perhaps the weakest of the ethnic separatist movements today. Nevertheless, Chehregani was hosted in Washington by the U.S. Department of Defense in June 2003, according to the Washington Times, and addressed a number of neoconservative venues. One difficulty with this movement is Chehregani’s antipathy to Kurds, whom he calls “guests” in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.

These separatist movements continue to have support in some legislative circles. Two of the most avid supporters are Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, both Republicans. Both favor removing the MEK from the list of terrorist organizations, and Brownback served as host to Mahmud Ali Chehregani in Washington.

No serious analyst of Iranian affairs believes that a strategy of ethnic division would bring down the central government of the Islamic Republic. Iran expert Vali Nasr, who teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University was quoted by Hersh as saying, “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. . . . working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.” Not to mention serious consequences for the United States.

[bigron]

Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008

Iran: The Threat


By Thomas Powers

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21592


At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to have lost its capacity to think clearly. Consider what passes for national discussion on the matter of Iran. The open question is whether the United States should or will attack Iran if it continues to reject American demands to give up uranium enrichment. Ignore for the moment whether the United States has any legal or moral justification for attacking Iran. Set aside the question whether Iran, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently claimed in a speech at West Point, "is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons." Focus instead on purely practical questions. By any standards Iran is a tough nut to crack: it is nearly three times the size of Texas, with a population of 70 million and a big income from oil which the world cannot afford to lose. Iran is believed to have the ability to block the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf through which much of the world's oil must pass on its way to market.

Keep in mind that the rising price of oil already threatens the world's economy. Iran also has a large army and deep ties to the population of Shiite coreligionists next door in Iraq. The American military already has its hands full with a hard-to-manage war in Iraq, and is proposing to send additional combat brigades to deal with a growing insurgency in Afghanistan. And yet with all these sound reasons for avoiding war with Iran, the United States for five years has repeatedly threatened it with military attack. These threats have lately acquired a new edge.


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President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are the primary authors of these threats, but others join them in proclaiming that "all options" must remain "on the table." The option they wish to emphasize is the option of military attack. The presidential candidates in the middle of this campaign year agree that Iran is a major security threat to the United States. Senator Hillary Clinton in the last days of April threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran—presumably with nuclear weapons—if it attacked Israel. Senator Barack Obama dismissed Clinton's threat as "bluster" in the familiar Bush style but agrees that Iran cannot be permitted to build nuclear weapons, and he too insists that a US attack on Iran is one of the options which must remain "on the table." The presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, takes a position as unyielding as the President's: Iran must abandon nuclear enrichment, stop "meddling" in Iraq with support for Shiite militias, and stop its sponsorship of "terrorism" carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Any of these threatening activities, in McCain's view, might justify a showdown with Iran.

Sometimes the President's threats are chillingly explicit. In April the administration released details of the intelligence that explained an Israeli air strike last September on a large, blocklike building in which Syria, with the help of North Korea, had allegedly been building a nuclear reactor. Releasing this information, Bush said in April, was Washington's way of "sending a message to Iran and the world for that matter about just how destabilizing nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East."


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The message to Iran was clear—stop or run the risk of a similar attack. Left ambiguous was the question of attack by whom—Israel, which proved itself willing with the attack in Syria, or the United States, which has more planes and missiles at its command? The kind of attack Iran might expect has been spelled out in news stories over the last few years. Some Iranian nuclear research sites are buried as much as seventy meters underground, and there are scores, perhaps hundreds of sites in all, so any serious American effort to destroy Iranian nuclear programs would require intense and numerous strikes by US bombers and missiles. For a time some administration officials lobbied to include the use of nuclear weapons in the strike options for attacking Iran's protected nuclear targets, but vigorous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff scotched that possibility two years ago.

Yet even conventional bombing attacks are acts of war; unprovoked they are acts of aggression. Iran has said it would respond to an attack but without specifying how. Possible counterattacks might target shipping in the Persian Gulf, or US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, or something else the US has not anticipated. Such an exchange could not long be confined to tit for tat. An all-out American bombing program might force Iran to capitulate, or it might not. The next step would be invasion, destruction of Iran's conventional army, occupation of Iran's capital, and change of Iran's regime, which has long been an openly declared policy objective of the United States.

Is there anyone outside the US government who thinks it makes sense to invite trouble on this scale? Even some insiders are of two minds. "Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need," Gates said in his speech at West Point, "and, in fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table."

Forgive me, but why? The military option is a threat; if the threat is carried out it promises widening war and the possibility of failure on the scale of disaster. Why does a policy of courting disaster have to remain on the table?

Nothing in the modern affairs of nations has been more exhaustively analyzed and debated than the utility and dangers of nuclear weapons, and yet the dangers posed by Iran with a bomb have been barely discussed. They are treated as a given. The core idea is that Iran cannot be trusted because the country is run by religious fanatics crazy enough to use a bomb if they had one. This is not the first time such arguments have been made. Some Americans, including Air Force generals, believed in the late 1940s that a preemptive war against the Soviet Union was justified by the peril of Moscow with a bomb. Twenty years later the Russians, in their turn, were so alarmed by the prospect of Beijing with a bomb that they quietly proposed to the Americans a joint effort to destroy the Chinese nuclear development effort with a preemptive attack.

The world's experience with nuclear weapons to date has shown that nuclear powers do not use them, and they seriously threaten to use them only to deter attack. Britain, France, Russia, China, Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have all acquired nuclear weapons in spite of international opposition. None has behaved recklessly with its new power. What changes is that nuclear powers have to be treated differently; in particular they cannot be casually threatened.

More recently the examples of Iraq and Libya have suggested that international sanctions work more effectively than military threats to persuade nations to give up bomb programs. As is now well known, American fears of Saddam Hussein with a bomb were unfounded. In early 2003, when the US was loudly insisting that only military invasion and regime change could keep Saddam from acquiring a bomb, the United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix said that whether the danger was real or imaginary could be determined by international weapons inspectors in a matter of months. In the event, the Americans themselves, after a year spent ransacking Iraq for evidence of nuclear weapons activity, announced that Saddam's bomb program had been completely shut down a dozen years previously, in 1991. But despite the success of sanctions against Iraq the United States continues to speak as if only threats or actual attack might block an Iranian bomb.


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Official reluctance to spell out why Tehran more than other nations cannot be trusted with a bomb has been matched by reluctance to consider why Tehran might want one in the first place. Iran's nuclear weapons program began under the Shah in the 1970s, sputtered for a time after the revolution, and was then revived after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The Iranian government flatly denies that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, hell-bent or otherwise. Recently the CIA released its own conclusion that Tehran had abandoned any formal R&D effort to design nuclear weapons and fit them to a delivery system.

But whether or not that is or remains true is in one sense irrelevant; the hard part—say 90 percent of the challenge—in manufacturing nuclear weapons is making fissionable material, and in that Iran appears to be well on its way to success with its new, more efficient design of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. So set aside the question of whether Iran wants an enrichment program to make bomb-grade material or only for the production of electricity; if they get either, they could get both. It is a relatively—stress relatively—simple task to turn highly enriched uranium into a weapon. Iran with highly enriched uranium poses almost the same threat as Iran with a bomb. What we ought to ask, then, is why Iran wants its own production capacity for making the stuff of bombs?

What US officials say, when they say anything at all, is that Tehran wants a bomb in order to dominate the Persian Gulf region and to threaten its neighbors, especially Israel. This is a misreading of how other nuclear powers have made use of their weapons. As tools of coercive diplomacy nuclear weapons are almost entirely useless, but they are extremely effective in blocking large-scale or regime-threatening attack. There is no evidence that Iran has a different motive, and plenty of reason for Iran to fear that attack is a real possibility.

Indeed, the Bush administration, far from trying to quiet Iran's fears, makes a point of confirming them every few months. These threats are not limited to words, but are supported with practical steps—the presence of large American armies just across Iran's borders in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the dispatch of the world's largest fleet of warships to cruise along Iran's Persian Gulf coastline. The Bush administration further accuses Iran of "meddling" in the affairs of its neighbors, of supplying weapons and training to Iraqis who kill Americans, and of being the world's principal state sponsor of terrorism. Fear that Saddam Hussein might provide nuclear weapons to terrorist groups was the leading American justification for the invasion of Iraq, and the same concern is often cited about Iran.

The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.


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The continuing military occupation of Iraq, the expansion of military efforts in Afghanistan, the desire to carry the war against the Taliban across the border into Pakistan, and the resort to military threats to force the government of Iran to give up its nuclear programs all represent examples of what has become the American approach during the Bush years to getting what it wants in the world—relying on military force to resolve political problems. How else are we to explain two wars and the threat of a third? Sometime during the Clinton years a faction of the Republican Party in exile lost patience with the accepted way of conducting foreign relations. Talking, negotiating, proposing alternatives, cajoling allies with economic and military aid, taking conflicts to the United Nations, convening conferences, sitting on commissions and issuing, repeating, and underlining warnings—in short, all the other "options on the table"—came to be seen in certain Republican circles as time-wasting, irresolute, and futile—a pattern of weakness that invites defiance.

The argument of the neoconservatives, stated in its nakedest form at the outset of the Bush administration, notes that the United States is the world's sole great power. We have a military capability that dwarfs all others. We need not defer to weak and corrupt governments that treat us with disdain.

The change was already underway when the shock of the attacks on September 11 created something like a Dirty Harry moment—an abrupt end to patience, a breaking with civility, a rejection of pettifogging legality, a brushing aside of caution in the use of force, all those Aunt Sally hesitations which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld intended to root out as part of the Pentagon's "old think." The goal was a kind of internal liberation of the national psyche—comfort with the word "imperial," unashamed acceptance of power, eagerness to put "boots on the ground," plain talk with anybody who stood in our way, prompt action if they did not step aside. Preemption was the dominant word in the new national security strategy issued in 2002. At West Point that spring the President said, "America will not wait to be attacked again. We will confront emerging threats before they fully materialize." The idea was in effect to clean up Dodge—to stop fooling around, remove defiant regimes, and make the Middle East safe for America and its friends.

Rarely has a theory been quashed by reality more abruptly. Iraq, as we discovered after the capture of Baghdad, had in fact posed no threat whatever, and its occupation brought a host of expensive and intractable new problems that continue to sap American strength. In Afghanistan as well, little went as planned. The Taliban was removed, not destroyed, and gradually it has returned. Pakistan, once a chief American ally in the region, now resists American pressure to pursue the Taliban into Pakistan's tribal areas. In Iraq, most American initiatives during five years of war have had the effect of strengthening the Shiite friends and allies of Iran. The government in Baghdad confers often with Iran, and the influence of Iran is heavily felt in Lebanon and Gaza. Iran dismisses all threats aimed at its nuclear programs as if the United States and Israel were powerless.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With its time in power rapidly running out, the Bush administration is mired in two frustrating wars, stretched thin militarily, living on borrowed money, and exhausted intellectually. It would be hard to name a time when the United States faced a wider range of political problems, or had better reasons to avoid additional military entanglements. Bush and Cheney concede nothing of the kind, but promise "serious consequences" for continued Iranian defiance. It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon, where an insider told the reporter Seymour Hersh two years ago, "There is a war about the war going on inside the building." When the administration planned to add a third aircraft carrier group to the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, the move was blocked by the then newly promoted chief of Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, who told friends that war with Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch."

Until his resignation in March, Fallon often contradicted and undermined the tough talk of the administration, speaking dismissively about the prospects of war with Iran. "Another war is just not where we want to go," he told the Financial Times. "This constant drumbeat of conflict...is not helpful and not useful," he said to al-Jazeera television. In recent months Fallon also traveled in Afghanistan and spoke at candid length with the military writer Thomas Barnett, who was working on an article for Esquire. When the article was ready to go to the printer Fallon invited an Esquire photographer to Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to take his picture. War with Iran, yes or no, Barnett wrote, would "all come down to one man"—Fallon. The White House was not happy with Fallon's interference, Barnett reported. Washington rumor said Fallon's time was short. His removal, Barnett predicted, "may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year...." A week after Barnett's piece appeared in Esquire, Gates announced that Fallon was retiring at his own request. The Esquire article had been the talk of the Pentagon nonstop; leaked stories were coming from all directions. Fallon wasn't just on his way out; Gates said he would be gone by the end of the month.

Fallon's open and outspoken resistance to the idea of war with Iran represents something new and extraordinary—maybe. It is too early to be sure. But beneath the surface of recent statements by Fallon, Gates, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, something large seems to be swelling up—resistance by the Pentagon to passive acceptance of a wider war. To see the shape of the conflict one must first accept the seriousness of both parties—the administration in making its threats to stop Iran's nuclear program, and Pentagon officials when they say a wider war would be practically difficult and strategically unnecessary.

This showdown—if it is truly taking place—has been a long time coming. Ten years ago a young Army major, H.R. McMaster, published a history of American escalation of the war in Vietnam, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. McMaster's argument, stripped to its core, was that against their own best judgment the joint chiefs passively acquiesced to White House pressure to expand the war. Johnson, with his eye on a second term, did not want to be the first American president to lose a war, and the joint chiefs did not want to run their careers aground. Despite the harshness of McMaster's conclusion his book was widely read in the Pentagon and made a deep impression on a generation of rising officers, many of them now of flag rank and in positions of responsibility.

When a reporter asked Gates if Fallon's departure "means we're going to war with Iran," the secretary called the idea "ridiculous." But he didn't leave it at that. He began his own campaign of public remarks stressing the importance of a peaceful resolution of the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear program. As he had at West Point, Gates held fast to the administration's basic stance—"all options are on the table"—but he drained the pugnacity of the claim with Fallon-like flourishes. "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage...and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said in mid-May. "There is no doubt that... we would be very hard-pressed to fight another major conventional war right now." Admiral Mullen sounded a similar note when he recently told a television journalist in Israel that he was "very hopeful" that the US could avoid a conflict with Iran, which he evaluated as "a very significant challenge." Mullen added:

I certainly share the concern about Iran and about the leadership, and I think it is very important that we increase as much as possible the financial pressure, the diplomatic pressure, the political pressure, and at the same time keep all the military options on the table.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Develop some leverage...sit down and talk...financial pressure, diplomatic pressure, political pressure....

These are unfamiliar words coming from the Bush administration. They roughly echo the approach of Barack Obama, who has said he would "talk" to the leaders of Iran, meaning that he would commence discussion of serious issues without first demanding concessions. The Bush administration rejects this idea. A few years back, at a moment when Iran still had a relatively moderate president and was prepared to offer major concessions to the US, it refused to talk to Iran at all; now it is prepared to talk, but only after Iran has suspended its uranium enrichment program. The words are slightly altered, but the stance remains intransigent.

In his recent speech to the Israeli Knesset, Bush, without naming Obama, denounced his approach as "this foolish delusion," discredited in the 1930s when the British thought they could "talk" to Hitler. In the world according to the neoconservatives no failing of character is more craven or pusillanimous than a willingness to talk to fascists, Nazis, or dictators. Bush plunged the rhetorical knife in deep: "We have an obligation to call this what it is— the false comfort of appeasement."

Bush and Cheney prefer the language of flat command that implies "or else." A long list might be appended here of their frequent warnings that the United States does not trust Iran with the knowledge to enrich bomb-grade uranium and will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. Many of these warnings have been issued in the last month or two and we may expect a continuing barrage until their final days in office. The President's frustration is plainly evident: Saddam Hussein may be gone, but Iran remains defiant, and more powerful than ever. The President's male pride seems to have been aroused; he said he was going to solve the Iranian problem and he doesn't want to back down. The intensity of Bush's desire to crush this final opponent is evident in his words and his body language, but does he retain the power to carry out his threats?

From one point of view the answer seems obvious. It is too late. With the exception only of the neoconservative faithful, every close observer of the American–Iranian standoff says that the administration's threats are empty, that the United States does not have the military resources, or the political support at home, or the agreement of allies abroad, to carry out a full-scale air attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, much less to invade and occupy the country. Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible. But if attack is impossible, why does Bush talk himself into an ever-tighter corner by continuing to issue threats? Does he believe Iran will cave? Are these the only words he thinks people will still listen to? Is he hoping to tie the hands of the next president? Or is he preparing to summon the power of his office to carry out the last option on the table? One hardly knows whether to take the question seriously. It seems alarmist and overexcited even to pose it when the realities are so clear. But it is impossible to be sure—Bush has a history.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an article I wrote in these pages in March 2003, I took up a concern that has preoccupied me ever since—the danger that the war would spread to engulf the region. That article concludes:

But a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein won't by itself provide a "decision outcome" in the present case because there are two rogue states with programs to build nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The theory says that both have to go, and if President Bush can be taken at his word, he thinks the same thing. To me, the implication seems clear: Iraq first, Iran next.
We're not free of this danger yet.

[Optimus]

Iran's IRGC holds military maneuvers
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=62956&sectionid=351020101
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:57:15
 
 
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have begun military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, reports released by news agencies say.

The war games, called Payambar-e Azam 3 are conducted by missile units of the IRGC' naval and air forces, Mehr and Fars news agencies reported.

The reports noted that the exercises early Tuesday morning are aimed at improving combat readiness and capability.

Washington and Tel Aviv accuse Iran of running a nuclear military program. Israel has threatened Tehran that it would use force in case the Islamic Republic continues nuclear enrichment.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is directed at electricity generation and is in line with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The war games come as the head of the IRGC in late June's remarks said that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.

The US Navy last week vowed Iran would not be allowed to block the Persian Gulf waterway, which carries crude from the world's largest oil exporting region.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were reported by state media to have held two days of war games in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman in February 2007.
 

[Optimus]

Bush’s Farewell Includes Attack on Iran
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/lamis_andoni/2008/07/bushs_farewell_includes_attack.html

Americans appear bent on either launching a strike or steps of covert action to create dynamics that will make it impossible to avoid waging war against Iran.

The U.S. and Israel have been actively engaged in a news media war to provoke an Iranian reaction that would justify a war, or at least a military action as a prelude to war.

This military action, strongly advocated by the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near Studies, could either be an American or an Israeli limited strike.

The U.S. has yet to garner enough Arab support for a war against Iran. But while some Arab governments are definitely afraid of Iranian influence in the region, they are also wary of a conflict that will drag the region into yet another continuous war.

An escalation of covert actions, according to the Finding report, revealed by Seymour Hersh and other journalists, is the most likely scenario. Covert actions will achieve several objectives – but, most likely, could trigger an Iranian action that could be construed as a declaration of war.

The ultimate goal, it seems, is to create chaos from within allowing for foreign intervention.

The important development, in my view, is that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is moving away from his opposition of war with Iran as he adopts more aggressive language on the topic.

More significant is that Obama has been replacing his advisers with more pro-Israeli politicos, such as Susan Rice and Tony Lake. Susan Rice has been a co-sponsors of the Washington Institutions, the paper that is usually issued as a briefing for the upcoming president, advocating “a military action,” as one option or as part of a pre-emptive plan to contain or defeat Iran.

Israel has been openly and aggressively inciting war against Iran – with the complicity of the Pentagon.

According the Israeli Yediot Ahranot, the news about Israeli military exercises for war with Iran was deliberately leaked by the Pentagon, in coordination with Israel, to prepare the atmosphere for war against Iran.

I think that the Bush Administration is determined to plant the seeds for war before it leaves, but the question remains if that means an overt strike or a covert action against Iran. It could be an Israeli strike or a covert – yet huge – act of sabotage on Iran that could set the wheels of war turning.

In other words, the administration will not go quietly without starting another explosion.

[Rock]

Iran Begins War Game With Warning to U.S., Israel



TEHRAN, Iran —  Iran's Revolutionary Guards have begun a military exercise and issued a warning that Israel and U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf would be prime targets if Iran is attacked.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,377626,00.html

[bigron]

Published on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/08/10204/



HR 362 and the Alarming Escalation of Hostility Towards Iran

by Alan Nasser


The current tension among political observers as to whether the U.S. and/or Israel will undertake military action against Iran before president Bush leaves office has been greatly intensified by the prospect that Congress will pass a frightening resolution, HR 362, as early as this week.

The Demands of HR 362

HR 362, sponsored by Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, calls for the president to enact more draconian economic sanctions against Iran. These include an embargo against any imports of refined petroleum. (While Iran is of course a major exporter of oil, it imports at least 40% of its refined petroleum.) The wording of the Resolution is chilling in the extreme: “Congress… demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by… prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.” The resolution is moving quickly through the House and could pass as early as this week.

The “stringent inspection requirements” listed would require a naval blockade, thereby constituting an act of war. And this is how the resolution would be perceived by virtually all Iranians. The result would surely marginalize moderates in Iran who would shun retaliatory measures against the Bush administration’s aggressive rhetoric, which has been escalating since fall of 2007. Iranians would unify behind their most belligerent leaders and the country would have been handed, by the president and Congress, powerful reasons to develop nuclear weapons for purposes of deterrence.

The final clause of the Resolution contains a classic example of political doubletalk: “… nothing in this Resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran.” But an embargo-with-inspections scheme can be put in effect only by means of a blockade, which logically entails the use of force.

Congressional Democrats, the IAEA and Factual Falsehoods in HR 362

There is more support now than there was a year ago in Congress, especially among the Democrats, for military action against Iran. Thus HR 362’s co-sponsors include 96 House Democrats and 111 House Republicans. These are the same Democrats whom Americans voted into Congress, in November 2006, as majorities in both houses, based on what voters believed to be the Democrats’ opposition to war in the Middle East.

To add insult to injury, HR 362 justifies its content with demonstrably false accusations about Iran’s nuclear program. The Resolution charges that Iran’s importing and manufacturing of centrifuges are “covert” and “illicit.” But under both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and Iran’s agreements with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), these activities are entirely permitted. The IAEA has publicly stated its support of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which it states is in full accord with all treaty requirements to which Iran is subject.

Late last October IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei remarked to CNN: “Have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can be readily used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No. … I very much have concern building confrontation, because that would lead to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiations and inspections. My fear is that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we would end up on a precipice, we would end up in an abyss.” ElBaradei’s most recent statements repeatedly echo these October remarks.

The Role of AIPAC

That HR 362 has been so warmly received on Capitol Hill is a sad testimony to Congress’s willing dependence on external interests which cannot be assumed to be identical to those of most Americans. The Resolution is known to have been initially drafted by the American-Israeli lobby AIPAC. In early June AIPAC sent more than a thousand lobbyists to Congress to whip up support for this Resolution.

Congress’s well known subordination to AIPAC’s agenda should not be construed as a democratic response to the wishes of the American Jewish community. Polls show that more than 80% of Jewish-Americans oppose an attack on Iran. Congress’s compliance to AIPAC’s interests amounts to obeisance to a foreign State, not to any domestic constituency.

HR 362 and the Pre-Invasion Rhetoric Re Iraq: Preludes to War

Reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s decision to impose severe extensive sanctions against Iraq, the White House last October unilaterally imposed harsh economic sanctions against a number of important Iranian institutions. In addition to targeting more than 20 Iranian companies and the country’s 3 major banks, the sanctions were announced as aimed mainly at Iran’s uniformed security force, the Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), which the Bush administration characterized, with no evidence, as “proliferators of weapons of mass destruction” and RGC’s Quds Force, which has been branded as a “supporter of terrorism.” These two accusations were the main pretexts for the invasion of Iraq.

Since Quds is part of RGC, and the latter is a state institution, the branding of Quds as a terrorist organization was ipso facto to brand Iran as a terrorist state.

Just as Washington had earlier cooperated with Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran (by providing him with, among other things, chemical weapons), so too had Washington benefited from Quds’s provision of arms to the U.S.-backed Muslim government in Bosnia, its aiding the forces fighting the Soviet military in Afghanistan, and its support for those fighting the Taliban. Quds even assisted, with U.S. approval, Kurdish guerrillas’ assault on the Baathist regime of Saddam.

The demonization of former allies has been common to Washington’s war preparations against both Iraq and Iran. In both cases perhaps the principal objectives have been to shut down the possibilities for a negotiated settlement, and to provide a “legal” framework for war by specifying the pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

The Democrats’ overwhelming support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is well known. Their legislation prior to the October 2007 sanctions is perhaps less well remembered. Shortly before Secretary Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the October sanctions, the Democratic-led house passed legislation that would impose sanctions on non-U.S. energy companies doing business in Iran. The legislation passed by an overwhelming 397 - 16 vote.

Democratic leaders justified this legislation as cutting off funding for Iran’s (entirely legal) nuclear program. But the legislation was surely motivated in large part by the intention to eliminate any competitive advantage that might be enjoyed by competitors of U.S. oil companies, which no longer have access to Iran-based profits.

HR 362 is a major extension of the October sanctions. The latter were intended to deal a damaging blow to Iran’s economy. The RGC is not merely a military institution. It performs a broad range of economic activities. Its engineering unit includes among its major projects a $2 billion dollar contract to develop Iran’s main gas field, a $1.3 billion contract for a new pipeline to Pakistan, the construction of a Tehran metro extension, a high-speed rail link connecting the capital and Isfahan, the expansion of shipping ports and the construction of a major dam.

The October sanctions are known to have already had a significant impact on Iran’s economy. HR 362 is intended to intensify that damage, to take negotiations off the table, to provoke Iranian hard-liners. Its passage would constitute another giant step toward what Mohamed ElBaradei called “an abyss.”

Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Monthly Review, Commonweal, and a number of professional journals.

[bigron]

Iran: War or Privatization: All Out War or "Economic Conquest"?


By Michel Chossudovsky
 
Global Research, July 4, 2008
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9501

Is the war against Iran on hold?

Tehran is to allow foreign investors, in what might be interpreted as an overture to the West, to acquire full ownership of Iran's State enterprises in the context of a far-reaching "free market" style privatization program.

With the price of crude oil at 140 dollars a barrel, the Iranian State is not in a financial straightjacket as in the case of most indebted developing countries, obliged by their creditors to sell their State assets to pay off a mounting external debt.

What are the political motivations behind this measure? And why Now?

Several Western companies have already been approached. Tehran will allow foreign capital  "to purchase unlimited shares of state-run enterprises which are in the process of being sold off".

While Iran's privatization program was launched during the government of Mohammed Khatami  in the late 1990s, the recent sell-off of shares in key state enterprises points to a new economic design. The underlying measure is far-reaching. It goes beyond the prevailing privatization framework applied in several developing countries within America's sphere of influence:

"The move is designed to attract greater foreign investment and is part of the country's sweeping economic liberalization program.

Iran will no longer make a distinction between domestic and foreign firms that wish to purchase state-run companies as long as the combined foreign ownership in any particular industry does not exceed 35%. ... As an example, a foreign firm may purchase an Iranian steel company but it would not be allowed to buy every business enterprise in Iran's steel industry.

Among the new incentive measures announced, foreign firms may also transfer their annual profit from their Iranian company out of the country in any currency they wish." (Iran to Allow 100% Foreign Ownership, Press TV, June 30, 2008)

It is important to carefully analyze this decision. The timing of the announcement by Iran's Privatization Organization (IPO) coincides with mounting US-Israeli threats to wage an all out war against Iran.

Moreover, the divestment program is compliant with the demands of the "Washington Consensus". The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed, with some reservations, that Tehran is committed to a "continued transition toward a viable and efficient market economy" while also implying .that the building of "investor confidence" requires an acceleration of  the privatization program.

In its May 2008 Review (Art. 4 Consultations), the IMF praised Tehran for its divestment program, which essentially transfers the ownership of State assets into private hands, while also underscoring that the program was being carried out in a speedily and efficient fashion.

Under the threat of war, is this renewed initiative by Tehran to privatize key industries intended to meet the demands of the Bush Administration?

The Bretton Woods institutions are known to directly serve US interests. They are not only in liaison with Wall Street and the US Treasury, they are also in contact with the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO. The IMF-World Bank are often consulted prior to the onslaught of a major war. In the war's aftermath, they are involved in providing "post conflict reconstruction" loans.  In this regard, the World Bank is a key player in channelling "foreign aid" to both Iraq and Afghanistan.   

The privatization measures suggest that Iran is prepared to allow foreign capital to gain control over important key sectors of the Iranian economy.

According to the chairman of the Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO) Gholamreza Kord-Zanganeh some 230 state-run companies are slated to be privatized by end of the Iranian year (March 2009). The shares of some 177 State companies were offered on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the last Iranian year (ending March 2008).

Already the state-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) has indicated that "a number of foreign telcos have expressed an interest in acquiring its shares when the government sells off part of its interest in a month’s time. Local press reports did not name the potential investors. TCI has a monopoly in Iran’s fixed line market and is also the country’s largest cellular operator via its subsidiary MCI." France's Alcatel, the MTN Group of South Africa and Germany's Siemens already have sizeable interests in Iran's telecom industry.

Other key sectors of the economy including aluminum, copper, the iron and steel industry have recently been put up for privatization, with the shares of State companies floated on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) 

More than Meets the Eye

Is this decision by Tehran to implement a far-reaching privatization program, in any way connected with continuous US saber rattling and diplomatic arm twisting?

At first sight it appears that Tehran is caving into Washington's demands so as to avoid an all out war. 

Iran's assets would be handed over on a silver platter to Western foreign investors, without the need for America to conquer new economic frontiers through military means? 

But there is more than meets the eye.

Washington has no interest in the imposition of a privatization program on Iran, as an "alternative" to an all out war. In fact quite the opposite. There are indications that the Bush adminstration's main objective is to stall the privatization program.

Rather than being applauded by Washington as a move in the right direction, Tehran's privatization program coincides with the launching (May 2008) of a far-reaching resolution in the US Congress (H.CON. RES 362), calling for the imposition of Worldwide financial sanctions directed against Iran:

"[H. CON. RES. 362] urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, ... international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks; ... energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and all companies which continue to do business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps." (See full text of H.CON RES 362) (emphasis added)

The resolution further demands that "the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran .... prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program."(emphasis added)

Were these economic sanctions to be carried out and enforced, they would paralyze trade and monetary transactions. Needless to say they would also undermine Iran's privatization program and foreclose the transfer of Iranian State assets into foreign hands.

Economic Warfare

Now why on earth would the Bush administration be opposed to the adoption of a neoliberal-style divestment program, which would strip the Islamic Republic of some of its most profitable assets?

If "economic conquest" is the ultimate objective of a profit driven military agenda, what then is the purpose of bombing Iran, when Iran actually accepts to hand over its assets at rock-bottom prices to foreign investors, in much the same way as in other compliant developing countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil,  etc?

The largest foreign investors in Iran are China and Russia.

While US companies are notoriously absent from the list of foreign direct investors, Germany, Italy and Japan have significant investment interests in oil and gas, the petrochemical industry, power generation and construction as well as in banking. Together with China and Russia, they are the main beneficiaries of the privatization program.

One of the main objectives of the proposed economic sanctions under H. RES CON 362 is to prevent foreign companies (including those from the European Union and Japan) , from acquiring a greater stake in the Iranian economy under Tehran's divestment program.

Other countries with major foreign investment interests in Iran include France, India, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland. Sweden's Svedala Industri has major interests in Iran’s copper mines.

France, Japan and Korea have interests in the automobile industry, in the form of licensing agreements with Iranian auto manufacturers.

Italy's ENI Oil Company is involved in the development of phases 4 and 5 of the South Pars oil field amounting to 3.8 billion dollars.(See Iranian Privatisation Organization, 2008 report) Total and the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Shell are involved in natural gas.

While the privatization process does not allow for the divestment of Iran's State oil company, it creates an environment which favors foreign investment by a number of countries including China, Russia, Italy, Malaysia, etc. in oil refinery, the petrochemical industry, the oil services economy as well as oil and gas infrastructure including exploration and oil-gas pipelines.

While several US corporations are (unofficially) conducting business in Iran, the US trade sanctions regime (renewed under the Bush adminstration) outlaws US  citizens and companies from doing business in Iran. In other words, US corporations would not be allowed to acquire Iranian State assets under the privatisation program unless the US trade sanctions regime were to be lifted.

Moreover, all foreign firms are treated on an equal footing. There is no preferential treatment for US companies, no corrupt colonial style arrangement as in war-torn Iraq, which favors the outright transfer of ownership and control of entire sectors of the national economy to a handful of US corporations. 

In other words, Tehran's privatization program does not serve US economic and strategic interests. It tends to favor countries which have longstanding trade and investment relations with the Islamic Republic. 

It favors Chinese, Russian, European and Japanese investors at the expense of the USA.

It undermines and weakens American hegemony. It goes against Washington's design to foster a "unipolar" New World Order through both economic and military means.   

And that is why Washington wants to shunt this program through a Worldwide economic sanctions regime which would, if implemented, paralyze trade, investment and monetary flows with Iran. 

The proposed economic sanctions' regime under H. CON 362 is intended to isolate Iran and prevent the transfer of Iranian assets into the hands of competing economic powers including China, Russia, the European Union and Japan.  It is tantamount to a declaration of war.

In a bitter irony, H CON 362 serves to undermine the economic interests of several of America's allies. The Resolution would prevent them from positioning themselves in the Middle East, despite the fact that these allies (e.g. France and Germany) are also involved through NATO in the planning of the war on Iran.

War and Financial Manipulation

The Bush administration has opted for an all out war on Iran in alliance with Israel, with a view to establishing an exclusive American sphere of influence in the Middle East.

A US-Israel sponsored military operation directed against Iran, would largely backlash on the economic and financial interests of several of America's allies, including Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

More generally, a war on Iran would hit corporate interests involved in the civilian economy as opposed to those more directly linked to the military industrial complex and the war economy. It would undermine local and regional economies, the consumer manufacturing and services economy, the automobile industry, the airlines, the tourist and leisure economy, etc.

Moreover, an all out war feeds the profit driven agenda of global banking, including the institutional speculators in the energy market, the powerful Anglo-American oil giants and America's weapons producers, the big five defense contractors plus British Aerospace Systems Corporation, which play a major role in the formulation of US foreign policy and the Pentagon's military agenda, not to mention the gamut of mercenary companies and military contractors.

A small number of global corporations and financial institutions feed on war and destruction to the detriment of  important sectors of economic activity, Broadly speaking, the bulk of the civilian economy is threatened.

What we are dealing with are conflicts and rivalries within the upper echelons of the global capitalist system, largely opposing those corporate players which have a direct interest in the war to the broader capitalist economy which ultimately depends on the continued development of civilian consumer and investment demand. 

These vested interests in a profit driven war also feed on economic recession and financial dislocation. The process of economic collapse which results, for instance, from the speculative hikes in oil and food prices, triggers bankruptcies on a large scale, which ultimately enable a handful of global corporations and financial institutions to "pick up the pieces" and consolidate their global control over the real economy as well as over the international monetary system.

Financial manipulation is intimately related to military decision-making. Major banks and financial institutions have links to the military and intelligence apparatus. Advanced knowledge or inside information by these institutional speculators regarding specific "false flag" terrorist attacks, or military operations in the Middle East is the source of tremendous speculative gains.

Both the war agenda and the proposed economic sanctions regime trigger, quite deliberately, a global atmosphere of insecurity and economic chaos.

In turn, the institutional speculators in London, Chicago and New York not only feed on economic chaos and uncertainty, their manipulative actions in the energy and commodity markets contribute to spearheading large sectors of the civilian economy into bankruptcy. 

The economic and financial dislocations resulting from the hikes in the prices of crude oil and food staples are the source of financial gains by a handful of global actors. Speculators are not concerned with the far-reaching consequences of a broader Middle East war, which could evolve into a World War Three scenario.

The pro-Israeli lobby in the US indirectly serves these powerful financial interests.  In the current context, Israel is an ally with significant military capabilities which serves America's broader objective in the Middle East. Washington, however, has little concern for the security of Israel, which in the case of a war on Iran would be the first target of retaliatory military action by Tehran.

The broader US objective consists in establishing, through military and economic means, an exclusive US sphere of influence throughout the Middle East.



No. The War on Iran is Not On Hold.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s "War on Terrorism"  Global Research, 2005.

 

[bigron]

Iran tests missiles amid tension 

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/07/20087945339826409.html
 
 
 Iranian officials say missiles are in place to
respond to any kind of attack.
 
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has test fired a longer range Shahab-3 missile, whose range  is sufficient to put Israel within reach, Arabic language state  channel Al-Alam reported.

The channel said on Wednesday that the missile test fired was a "Shahab-3  with a conventional warhead weighing one tonne and a 2,000km range".

The test firing, which also included the firing of several other  missiles, comes at a time of growing tensions over the Iranian  nuclear programme, which the West fears could be aimed at making an  atomic bomb.

The US condemned the tests and said Tehran should refrain from such exercises.

"The aim of these war games is to show we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation," Al-Alam quoted Hossein Salami, the Revolutionary Guards air force commander, as saying.
   
"Our missiles are ready for shooting at any place and any time, quickly and with accuracy.
   
"The enemy must not repeat its mistakes. The enemy targets are under surveillance," he added.

Military might

In total nine missiles were tested, state-run English language channel Press-TV reported.
   
Along with the Shahab-3, the missiles tested were the Zelzal, which has a range of up to 400km, and the Fateh, which has a range of around 170km.
   
Press-TV showed pictures of the Shahab-3 being launched at an undisclosed desert location inside Iran.
   
"This a show of Iran's military muscle in the region in the face of threats from countries who said they would target Iran's nuclear  facilities," the Press-TV announcer said.
   
The United States and its top regional ally Israel have never  ruled out attacking Iran over its nuclear drive.

The firing comes a day after an aide to supreme leader Ayatollah  Ali Khamenei warned Iran would "set fire" to Israel and the US navy in the Gulf as its first response to any American attack over its  nuclear programme.
   
"The first US shot on Iran would set the United States' vital interests in the world on fire," Ali Shirazi, a mid-ranking  cleric who is Khamenei's representative to the naval forces of the  Revolutionary Guards, said.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 

[scary]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/09/iran.iraq/index.html

[tattoo8118]

and so it begins.

[David Rothscum]

Off to the bunkers everyone. Before you all start stuffing down Iodine your throat while watching CNN at 3 AM I want to remember you all that the US has made an alliance with the violent Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq to attack Iran. Anyway, I hope Bush doesn't use this, because as you all know Turkey did the same in Iraq and Israel the same in Lebanon, and Bush didn't seem to care.

[bigron]

July 9, 2008

Is Iran Still an Option?
 
Charles Peña


A question I'm often asked is whether military action against Iran is still an option for the Bush administration. The short answer is "yes." Last week, when a reporter raised the issue of "a spate of recent stories about possible military action against Iran before the end of the year" President Bush responded that "the first option for the United States is to solve this problem diplomatically" but that "all options are on the table."

Yet many people (many of whom did not believe that the United States could or would invade Iraq) share an utter disbelief that the United States is in any position use military force against Iran. After all, even if one is willing to believe that we are making progress, there are still some 140,000 U.S. soldiers deployed in Iraq – which has put a great strain on the U.S. military (particularly the Army and Marine Corps, as well as the National Guard and reserves). And things appear to be taking a turn for the worse in Afghanistan (earlier this week a suicide bomber killed 41 people in an attack on the Indian embassy). So if our hands our tied in Iraq and Afghanistan, how could we possibly do anything in Iran?

To begin, it is important to remember that advocates for military action against Iran – both inside and outside of the administration – do not necessarily adhere to the same logic and reality that the rest of us do. As Ron Suskind wrote in an October 2004 New York Times Magazine article:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

Moreover, military action does not necessarily mean a ground invasion. If the primary target is Iran's nuclear program, then the U.S. Air Force and Navy (both not strained by the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan) could conduct air strikes. The number of targets and requisite aimpoints to destroy those targets ranges from a very few (perhaps just the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz which is key to the Iranians ability to produce highly enriched uranium that could be used in nuclear weapon) to – according to retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner – as many as 24 nuclear-related facilities consisting of 400 aimpoints. But whether the number is small or large, it is well within the capability of the U.S. Air Force and Navy that orchestrated the complex air strikes for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And while the target of air strikes might be Iran's nuclear program, the nuclear issue is not the only rationale for taking action. The administration has taken almost every opportunity to link Iran to the violence in Iraq. More importantly, Iran has been blamed for the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq – largely by claims that the Iranians are responsible for supplying parts and expertise to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used in roadside bombings that have killed American soldiers. (According to Gardiner, the Bush administration believes in seven key truths in making its case against Iran: Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction, Iran is ignoring the international community, Iran supports Hezbollah and terrorism, Iran is increasingly inserting itself in Iraq and beginning to be involved in Afghanistan, the people of Iran want a regime change, sanctions are not going to work, and you cannot negotiate with these people.)

Finally, there is the Israeli "wild card" to consider. According to Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli defense minister who is now a deputy prime minister, "If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack." Mofaz's comments were made shortly after an Israeli military exercise that had all the makings of a rehearsal for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Gardiner believes otherwise: "The signal I received is that Israel does NOT have the capability to effectively attack Iran's nuclear facilities." Even if Gardiner's military assessment is correct, it is important to understand that the Israeli government's worldview is different. Iran – particularly a nuclear-capable Iran – is seen as a mortal threat to Israel (which is only reinforced by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inflammatory rhetoric). Survival of the Jewish state may trump all other considerations – including skyrocketing the price of oil past $200 a barrel. And in a classic case of the tail wagging the dog, Israeli insistence on taking military action against Iran could cause the United States to do its bidding – particularly if Gardiner's assessment of Israel's military capabilities is correct.

So with less than four months to go until the presidential election, an October surprise is still very much within the realm of possibility.
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=13107 

[bigron]

Iranian shelling reported in northern Iraq


Story Highlights:


Shelling hit border villages in Qandil mountains area in Sulaimaniya province

Authorities: Party of Free Life of Kurdistan is based in the region

Kurdish region a contiguous area that spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey


By CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iranian artillery shells rained down on villages in northern Iraq Wednesday where Kurdish rebels were thought to be operating.

A security official with Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government in Sulaimaniya confirmed the information.

The early-morning shelling hit border villages in Qandil mountains area in Sulaimaniya province and there were no reports of casualties.

Authorities say the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan is based in the region.

It is is part of an alliance of Kurdish rebel groups that includes the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which conducts attacks against Turkey from northern Iraq.

The Kurdish region is a contiguous area that spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey and the Kurdish rebels in those regions are fighting for an independent Kurdish state.

All AboutIraq • Iran
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

Iraq
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Iraq
Iran
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Iran
Iraq
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Iraq
Iran
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Iran

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/09/iran.iraq/index.html 
 

[Boubear]

Iran and Turkey have been shelling the Kurds for a while now.  They have had joint operations with Turkey for quite sometime.  Bush has never done anything about it, and he may never.  They seem to have abandoned the Kurds!!

[David Rothscum]

Iran and Turkey have been shelling the Kurds for a while now.  They have had joint operations with Turkey for quite sometime.  Bush has never done anything about it, and he may never.  They seem to have abandoned the Kurds!!

They're using the Kurds in Iraq to destabilize the entire region.

[Boubear]

They're using the Kurds in Iraq to destabilize the entire region.

Can you explain, I don't understand what you mean!!

[scary]

I just saw the article, seems like its un-important somehow......

[bigron]

All this is part of  justifying  50 permanent US BASES in Iraq   FOREVER

[David Rothscum]

Can you explain, I don't understand what you mean!!

The Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq is basically an independent country now, the central government hardly controls Northern Iraq. This has inspired the Kurds in the surrounding country, who have always wanted an independent state to start fighting again. Violence surged because of this in Turkey, this is why the Turkish invaded. The Iranian state press is reporting that the Kurdish groups in Iraq are now being used by the US against Iran: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=61486&sectionid=351020101 Other reports have already shown how the US is using all ethnic minorities in Iran against the central government: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html
The end goal seems to be to create an independent Kurdish state, because they want to change the way the entire region looks. They also want to create an independent Baluchi state, which is one of the reasons they're funding Jundullah, and they want to break up Saudi Arabia. But right now the US treats the Kurdish people as canon fodder against Iran.

[scary]

All this is part of  justifying  50 permanent US BASES in Iraq   FOREVER

Yep

[munkey]

I think this one is just a storm in a tea cup.

This would not be enough for the American people to agree with an attack on Iran, It hasn't effected you.

Things get busy after US lives are taken in large numbers or an attack on home soil.

There is no way he will get support for a war because a couple of mortars went stray.

I would be more concerned with the war games going on in the gulf, like 2 boxers shaping up before the first punch is thrown.

The US will put itself in harms way and then claim to be the victim, much easier to get the people to follow.